Last month, ANet coach Keneisha Alford and Dr. Tisha White, our executive director for TN/AL/FL, led a professional learning session for Birmingham City Schools partners. District administrators and leaders from Barrett Elementary, Booker T. Washington K-8, Epic Alternative Elementary, Hayes K-8, Huffman Academy, and West End Academy examined best practices for using student data to inform instruction.
The session had three objectives:
Leaders will understand all aspects of the Teaching and Learning Cycle and be able to communicate its purpose.
Leaders will identify structures and resources that can strengthen data analysis within the Teaching and Learning Cycle.
Leaders will explore ways to apply best practices at their school to accelerate targeted aspects of the Teaching and Learning Cycle.
- Assessment: Define the roadmap for rigor.
- Analysis: Determine where students are struggling and why.
- Action: Implement new teaching plans to respond to this analysis.
- Systems: Create systems and structures to ensure continual data-driven improvement.
The session received strongly positive feedback (no surprise—Keneisha and Tisha are awesome!). Here are some of the comments attendees made on the session feedback survey:
“A big takeaway for me was getting teachers to focus beyond the percentage on an assessment. ”
“One takeaway from this session for me was understanding the various reports for analyzing data. Specifically, the rationale for why students may have selected the incorrect answer. ”
Several leaders expressed that they look forward to future opportunities to learn and collaborate:
“[I want] to continue to review and analyze the data from the standards to increase teaching and learning opportunities for both teachers and students. ”
“I look forward to attending more meetings to truly understand what a partnership with ANet means! ”