Weighing yourself to measure your physical fitness

Shapiro, Brian

CA

Marzano, R. J. (2003). Using data: Two wrongs and a right. Educational Leadership, 60(5), 56-61.

In today’s data-obsessed educational culture, many schools are standardized testing, classroom testing, keeping portfolios, and having endless meetings about DATA! And of course it is a key component of strong, effective teaching—to be able to assess where students are in their understanding of a concept or ability with a skill. What makes this article interesting is that it highlights, based on research, two large-scale errors to avoid when a school is trying to use data to effectively drive instruction.

The first “wrong” is relying heavily on indirect measures of learning. In a nutshell, this means do not rely on generic or “off the shelf” standardized tests to measure the progress students are making in their learning. Marzano explains that these tests do not adequately assess the content taught at a given school or class. In some cases the data can even produce false conclusions. The metaphor he uses, compares relying heavily on standardized tests to measure learning is like only weighing yourself to measure personal fitness. This seems obvious on some level, but clearly it is not given the amount of budgeting decisions and now even teacher-effectiveness measurements based on these sorts of tests.

The second “wrong” is when schools have no explanatory model to interpret the data. Marzano contends that this second wrong is “less obvious than the first and therefore more insidious as a result." (Marzano, 2003). Data is not useful if there is no plan in place for both interpreting and using the data to drive instruction.

The “right” option that Marzano focuses on in this article is the idea of keeping a running “report card” of the actual skills and content being taught in classes, by teachers. Of course teachers would need the time and support to be able to do this, but if done consistently it will drive instruction, allow for focused scaffolding and challenges. In addition to this brief summary of what the right way to collect data is, Marzano briefly touches on the school, teacher, and student level factors that affect student learning. He also provides a chart that would allow school leaders and committees to assess where they are in implementing a “Guaranteed and viable curriculum.” The chart guides the team is not only addressing where their school is, but how much each of five factors would improve student learning, and how easy or difficult would each one be to improve at their school, providing an individualized system to analyze and plan.