Data is Dangerous for Students

Data, data, data. The world of education is currently ruled by data. Data is a way to show that students are “growing” and prove that we are doing what is right for the students.

I know that data is supposed to be the lifeblood of education, but I have a few specific qualms with data:

1.)   Time lost for instruction and planning – In order for data to be valid you must have multiple data points. This means taking time during class for students to take multiple assessments and then taking planning time to analyze and triangulate data. Often once we are done analyzing and triangulating data, creating graphs and working through the steps to figure out who needs help with what, we come up with a list of students that we could have predicted from basic classroom observations. So while it’s nice to have “proof” that what we’re doing is correct, is all that time spent really necessary to tell us to do what we would have probably done anyways?

2.)   Increased student anxiety – Kids know that these tests they take are being tracked. Even if we take the time to tell them that these are just checkpoints and nothing for them to stress over, (which is often a lie because more and more decisions are being made that affect student and teacher careers based off of assessments that were only ever meant to inform instruction) students worry about how they are doing. Or the flipside happens and students just start to have the idea that they will never hit the milestone or pass the test and so they begin to not even try.

3.)   Students and teachers are being punished for things outside of their control – Teaching in low income schools, I know that the playing field is not level. Many students from low income areas come in without the same background knowledge that their high income peers come in with. This means that their reading comprehension is affected, and that they will not have the same understanding of basic principles of math as other students. This does not mean that they cannot learn, by any means. However, it does mean that they will often score lower on standardized assessments. Because they traditionally score lower, low income students are often subjected to more test prep and boxed curriculum that is “research based”. What they do not receive is what they were lacking in the first place – experiential knowledge. The more assessments we have to prep them for, the less time there is for giving them exposure to quality literature, field trips and science experiments. Holding teachers responsible to student growth on these tests creates an environment of anxiety and resentment and often leads the best teachers to flee the schools that need them the most.

Unfortunately as teachers, even though we know these facts, we have very little control over what is expected of us in regards to data. We do have control over our attitude towards data, especially when dealing with our students. We need to stress to the students that data is not the sum total of who they are. Data is simply a checkpoint to see if we’re on the right track. Students should have access to the data, but it should not be the focus point of their every day. If we as teachers take the focus off of data and put the focus onto learning, the students will follow our lead.

We also need to be advocates for our students, as much as we possibly can. This is becoming more and more difficult because advocating for our students often means putting ourselves and our livelihoods at risk. We give students tests we don't agree with because to refuse to give the test would mean losing our jobs. However, the more outspoken we are about using data collection correctly, the more likely that policy will eventually change to benefit our students. Even if it's just within your classroom or your school, pushing for one less test or one more appropriate reporting method, you can still be an advocate for your students. Push them and society to see that students are more than just a test score!

I recently read the articles What's at Risk When Schools Focus Too Much on Student Data? and How Some School 'Data Walls' Violate US Privacy Laws which have some great additional points on why the focus on data is getting to be dangerous for our students. As you are finishing up this school year, or preparing for next school year, take some time to think about how you are using data and how you are advocating for your students. What do you want to continue doing? What do you want to change? As teachers our focus should always be on how we can help our students as much as possible. Sometimes our own reflections can give us a better understanding of this than all of the data graphs in the world.

Preparing for Reading Comprehension Standardized Tests

Last week my students took a quiz on a passage that they had read more than five times. The students could create a story map on the story. They could identify the characters, the setting, the problem, the solution. They could each tell me the main idea and some supporting details. However, they ALL failed the quiz. Why did this happen? Well with some reflection we realized that most of the questions called for the students to utilize test taking skills. 
As much as I would prefer to assess my students' understanding based on projects, essays and written short response questions where students can justify and explain their thinking. Unfortunately the reality is that most of our standardized assessments are multiple choice questions that require students to understand how to take a test. So I often find myself in need of finding a compromise, a way to teach students about taking a test without teaching "to the test". Here are the top five things that I do to prepare my students for standardized reading tests:

1.) Teach students the important things to look for. There are many cute mnemonics out there like UNRAVEL that give students the important things to look for in test questions, but I have found that these often get students focused on memorizing the mnemonics instead of really focusing in on what they need to know. Also many programs will focus on circling one thing, underlining another, etc. and then students get so focused on what they're supposed to do they forget what they're supposed to look for or how to actually answer the question. So instead, I make my students a poster like this one of important things to look out for. If you'd like to use this poster with your kiddos, feel free to grab it for free from my Teachers Pay Teacher store.

2.) Model test taking strategies. There are a few websites out there that provide you reading passages and questions that you can use to model test taking strategies with your students. Modeling can happen in a whole group or small group setting. If you have access to a projector or document camera, it is very easy to go through the process together with the students mimicking on their papers what you are doing on the screen. Here are a few websites with passages and questions:

 - Readworks.org - This website includes grade and lexile leveled passages and questions, which provides for easy differentiation.

 - Teachnology - There are many passages on this site, but they are not leveled in any way.

 - Moby Max - With a free account you can go through a story and questions on a student's account. While you can't print out the stories, they are a bit more interactive than other passages.

- Reading A - Z - This service does come at a cost, but the cost provides you with tons of books and passages that have quizzes, comprehension sheets and lesson plans.

3.) Allow students to prepare their own questions. After you have looked at the types of questions that are commonly used in standardized tests, allow students to write their own test questions from books they have read, newspaper articles, or any of the passages on these websites, which provide passages but no questions. Students will work on test preparation, critical thinking skills and have fun being the teacher. At my Teachers Pay Teachers store, I have a simple Kids Create the Test sheet that can be used for this type of activity.

Websites with passages but no comprehension questions:

 - K5 Learning

 - McGraw Hill

 - K12 Reading (Includes open ended comprehension questions)

 - RHL School

 - Teacher's Guide

4.) Require students to justify their answers and think about the text in multiple formats. Specifically if your students are taking the PARCC as their standardized assessments, they are going to be required to give proof and justify their answers. For this reason we need to make it a part of our daily routine to ask our students "Why do you think this?" or "Where in the story did you find that information?" I always ask my students to include this information in their weekly reading response journal entries. Included on the rubric is to "give information from the text to support their thinking". The more our students are thinking about why their answers are correct, the more likely they are to actually be correct.

5.) Teach specific lessons about "outside knowledge" types of questions - author's purpose, vocabulary, genres. A percentage of standardized test questions have little to nothing to do with comprehending the passages that the students are reading. Instead they are about the difference betwen science fiction and historical fiction or the meaning of a key vocabulary word. While these are important skills, they aren't the same as just understanding the passage, so we need to teach students about how to answer these types of questions. And of course we need to teach them about these concepts because that is what these questions are really testing, how well we've covered these additional text concepts. So be sure to spend some time teaching students about genres, author's purpose, reading strategies vocabulary and identifying the meaning of a vocabulary word by using context clues. I personally do two big mini lessons on these concepts at this time of the year, one on genres and the other on reading strategies, specifically the vocabulary of questions using reading strategies. Both of these power point lessons can be found in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Of course all of these test taking strategies are moot if students can't decode and comprehend the passages, so the most important thing that we can do for our students is to give them a solid base in reading by building phonics skills (see my phonics program), vocabulary (see my spelling and vocabulary programs) and comprehension skills (see my reading journals and in depth novel and book studies).