MPS has an application that is available to all employees, the Data Warehouse, which houses all kinds of data about every school in the district. The data stored here includes attendance, assessment, discipline, enrollment, support services, staff, professional development, and students. There is even data about the quality of the data provided! I believe this is a fairly new tool that has been introduced, or made more accessible, in the past few years. I like that this information is made so readily available for teachers. As we discuss the importance of data for the purpose of school/district improvement, it is vital for that data be made available to the people on the front lines. As a matter of fact, I don't think it is a bad idea to share that information with students, as well.
I have participated in data retreats at the first school I taught at. Being a charter school, the teachers were a part of the retreat, discussing the successes, failures, enhancements, and new directions regarding student achievement. Now, as a teacher in a large district, my only participation is listening to the principal summarize it. The WINSS site is new to me. I had a great time sifting through the information for my school. However, my mind kept wandering to thoughts of how confusing, or misleading, this information could be for the many people, including parents, who don't understand own to look critically at it.
The MPS Data Warehouse sounds like a terrific resource for teachers. Could the data there be shared with the public to promote what is working for the MPS district?
ReplyDeleteI used the WINSS site as a Stritch undergrad when we were asked to compare information about WI public schools. I also used it to study up on schools I interviewed with. Your right in thinking that the site could potentially be confusing for people not familiar with the vocabulary associated with the site.
Erin I also agree with the WINSS site making people do a double take. People like graphs so my first thought is that those viewing will see the charts and assess the colorful bar graph but scrolling down to the data broken up below the charts might be able to help them out.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember if you are elementary or not but I was thinking that it would be nice to be able to see data for grades as they move up. As a high school teacher I only see the 10th grade data and it's a different population every year so sometimes I think it's kind of hit or miss as to the outcome. Do you think it helps to be able to track the same crowd over time?
Erin,
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of the application that MPS has. Do you think it is very beneficial? I would not mind something similar to that in my district. Although we are informed at pretty much every faculty meeting where our test scores are and that we need to improve them.
The WINSS site has a lot of information and it was interesting to see the prior years data. I could see one class that seemed to do better than any other year. How can you explain that? I really doubt that teachers did a much better job from one year to the next. I wonder how someone could really make that data useful or if you have to use trends as a guide.