We’ve prototyped a dashboard data view tool that would be a free, easy-to-use, and privacy-protected display of students’ basic info and progress on key benchmarks. Here’s an example of a view for an administrator (this is all fake data!). While this is a screen shot, the actual tool lets you sort the columns by language group, homeroom, etc. This was based on an initial Excel spreadsheet made by a Somerville resident, Greg Nadeau:
In the dashboard project, I’ve been thinking lately about one communication act technology affords: examining patterns (“sorting” the data), with the click of a button. Sorting children is always a fraught thing to do (a child is far more than the characteristics officially recorded in a district database!). But privately, administrators often need to sort basic data to find basic patterns to target interventions. Who is not coming to school? Who is struggling with math as measured on tests? What’s the correlation between students who aren’t coming to school, and those struggling with math on tests? Now, what are we going to do in response to the pattern we’ve found? One elementary school teacher looking at this prototype made a great point about a teacher’s similar information needs: a teacher at times also needs to sort his data to find patterns. (He wondered: which of my students are struggling with both attendance, and reading test scores? Or, which of my students are doing fine on grades/class assignments, but not on tests?) It’s this act of sorting that technology particularly makes possible. This teacher is technologically savvy, and so he already prints out spreadsheets on his class’s attendance, test scores, and more from Somerville’s current student information system. He does the math by hand to show changes in test scores over time (our next revision will do this too, and we’ll add/delete fields based on teacher/administrator/parent/student feedback). He colorizes these spreadsheets on paper with a highlighter so he can consider patterns. But he wants to sort the data from his class way more easily. We’re working to create a free tool that would make that quickly possible for him. (Most such tools cost districts lots of money.) And of course, what really matters is what people DO with data. That’s why we’re focused on the parent-teacher-student conference as a key moment where data would be discussed. We’re designing other data displays further with teachers and parents, to co-create tools useful for each partner. One is a multilingual, individual view of each student’s attendance, grades, test scores, and more. Another is a live version of Somerville’s elementary “report card,” with notetaking sections for teachers and parents. We’re asking: what information on student progress does a parent or student need to see privately, and how could it be displayed most clearly? How could data display tools go beyond just “showing” progress, to also allow partners to take notes on their plans for student success? This also relates to the eportfolio pilot project underway at Somerville High. (More on that soon.) An eportfolio can communicate “the whole student” in ways that more basic data display of test scores, grades, and attendance never can. So ideally, someday — here in Somerville, or elsewhere — these communication tools and strategies would all be linked together.