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:
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Leaders will understand all aspects of the Teaching and Learning Cycle and be able to communicate its purpose.
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Leaders will identify structures and resources that can strengthen data analysis within the Teaching and Learning Cycle.
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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!”