As Fullan (2016) notes, change is not easy, even when it is sought As an educational leader in your community, you may be familiar with the issues facing Grand City and recognize th

Illustration: Thinkstock/iStock

Teachers know all the terms: data-driven decision making, data-informed deci- sion making, data-based decision making, data use, iterative cycles of inquiry, and more. Whatever you call it, data-driven decision making is a hot topic in education. It also has become a focal point for strong opinions — positive and negative. Policy makers believe student achievement will improve when educators use data to inform their teaching. Yet the research evidence proving this is inconsistent at best (Carlson, Borman, & Robinson, 2011; Hamilton et al., 2009; Konstantopoulos, Miller, & van der Ploeg, 2013).

Many educators worry about the growing emphasis and reli- ance on data. Some teachers actually refer to data as “the other four-letter word” — time being the fi rst one. Teachers say that poring over reams of data takes time from where they want to be — in the classroom with students. Skepticism abounds, and con- cerns about how data are used are very real. Some educators worry that data are part of the “gotcha,” being used to evaluate their performance in unrealistic ways. What’s more, they say the data they are being re- quired to examine has little utility in their practice.

ELLEn B. MandInach ([email protected]) is senior research scientist and director of the Data for Decisions initiative at WestEd, San Francisco, Calif. BrEnnan M. Parton is a senior associate, state policy and advocacy for Data Quality Campaign, Washington, D.C. EdIth S. GUMMEr is a senior research associate in the evaluation research program at WestEd. rachEL andErSon is a policy analysis and research associate at Data Quality Campaign.

Privacy and school data

V96 N5 kappanmagazine.org 25

Ethical and appropriate data use requires data literacy Student data can be a powerful, transformative tool in teaching, but to reap those potential benefi ts practitioners must become more data literate.

By Ellen B. Mandinach, Brennan M. Parton,

Edith S. Gummer, and rachel anderson

Comments? Like PDK at www. facebook.com/pdkintl

K1502_February.indd 25 12/19/14 10:31 AM

26 Kappan February 2015

Gummer and Mandinach (in press) have defi ned a construct they call data literacy for teaching:

The ability to transform information into actionable instructional knowledge and practices by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting all types of data (assess- ment, school climate, behavioral, snapshot, longitu- dinal, moment-to-moment, etc.) to help determine instructional steps. It combines an understanding of data with standards, disciplinary knowledge and practices, curricular knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and an understanding of how children learn.

The construct has three main domains of knowl- edge, which combine to enable teachers to know what the data mean in terms of their content area and within a learning progression and then to trans- late that knowledge into instructional steps.

• Data use for teaching or what might be considered the ability to analyze and use data.

• Content knowledge or the teacher’s under- standing of a specifi c domain or subject.

• Pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) or the ability to apply knowledge of pedagogy in the context of the content area.

These domains are composed of components comprising specifi c skills that are all part of an in- quiry cycle and include:

• How to identify problems of practice; • How to frame questions; • How to use data; • How to transform data into information; • How to transform information into a decision; • How to evaluate the outcomes of a decision.

Ethical and responsible data use is part of knowing how to use data, and that knowledge focuses on how to protect student privacy and maintain confi denti- ality of student data. Such knowledge includes how and when to discuss students’ performance, behav- ior, attitudes, etc. with other teachers, administra- tors, and parents. It also includes knowing how to remove identifying information from a student re- cord and how to maintain proper student records — whether electronic or in paper-and-pencil format. It includes knowing who has access to student records and when, how, and the process by which to release data or results. Responsible data use also includes knowing when and when not to discuss a student’s performance in public.

Take, for example, two teacher colleagues who run into each other in the grocery story checkout line and begin talking about a student who’s experiencing

Parents and the broader public share those con- cerns and have raised issues about what data are being collected about students, how they are be- ing used, whether they are secure, and who has access to them. Data breaches at the federal level and in the private sector have garnered media at- tention and stoked fears. Regulations to guide data use and protect the privacy and confi dentiality of student data exist in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). But FERPA is not easy to understand. Parents likely receive a legal notice about FERPA from their school district each year. Teachers and administrators likely receive FERPA compliance training annually. But such notices and training don’t help parents and teachers understand their rights and roles in protecting student privacy, and they sometimes lead to fear that nothing should be done with the data.

For teachers, using data ethically — in a way that’s mindful of their responsibility to keep individual stu- dent information private — is a requirement of us- ing data effectively. So how do we help educators understand their role in protecting student data and using data responsibly? The short answer is that they need to be data literate.

data literacy and ethics

Data use is not an isolated event (Earl & Katz, 2006). Data use should be a continuous, integrated part of practice that is used all the time. In fact, Mandinach (2012) maintains that good teachers have been employing data-driven decision making all along — it just hasn’t been recognized by that term. But there is more work to be done to ensure that educators know how to continuously, effectively, and ethically use data — that is, to help them to be data literate.

Ethical and responsible data use is part of

knowing how to use data, and that knowledge

focuses on how to protect student privacy and

maintain confi dentiality of student data.

K1502_February.indd 26 12/19/14 10:31 AM

V96 N5 kappanmagazine.org 27

data literate requires that teachers know what consti- tutes responsible data use and what is inappropriate. But the characterization of a construct such as data literacy in terms of cognitive aspects of knowledge and skills is only part of what we need to examine to truly understand what teachers need to know and be able to do. Educators also need to consider how data literacy plays out in teacher identity, values, and epistemic beliefs. How teachers see themselves as data users — as individualists or part of a team — infl uences what they do. The extent to which data use is seen as a valuable addition to teacher practice

some diffi culties. Someone passes by and overhears the teachers’ discussion. That is a violation of the stu- dent’s privacy, even if the teachers didn’t mean to do so and even if the passerby did not know the student.

But such a conversation would not be a privacy vio- lation if the teachers were working in a data team or a professional learning community, where the expec- tation is professional discourse about student perfor- mance, learning issues, and potential remediation. See Table 1 for a more comprehensive assessment of data practices.

These may be fi ne lines of distinction, but being

• Using data to differentiate instruction and group students.

• Using data walls to organize and clearly understand student data

• Using data walls to talk to other teachers about what the data show and problems of practice

• Placing data walls that contain student names and other identifi ers in rooms accessible only to teachers and school leaders

• Removing student identifi ers when those data walls are moved to common areas

• Discussing student data at school in collaboration with colleagues to set goals and identify problems of practice

• Using student artifacts in collaboration with other educators for collaboration and improving practice

• Communicating about an individual student’s data with his or her parents

• Using only secure systems to upload and manipulate personally identifi able information, such as those provided by the state or district

• Using data to track or label students as unable to succeed.

• Hanging data walls with student names and other identifi ers in classrooms where anyone who comes into the room can see them

• Keeping data walls with student names or other identifi ers in rooms where the public might see them during events or meetings

• Talking about individual student successes and challenges in public

• Sharing student artifacts outside of an education setting, such as on a web site like Pinterest, Facebook, or Twitter

• Dismissing parent requests for data, or ignoring their concerns about how it will be used

• Comparing a student’s performance to that of other individual students in conversations with parents

• Storing or manipulating student data through applications like Dropbox, on thumb drives, or in email

taBLE 1. an assessment of data use practices

Good practice Practices to avoid

K1502_February.indd 27 12/19/14 10:31 AM

28 Kappan February 2015

conclusion

Data literacy is a critical part of effective teach- ing, and as the proliferation of data increases, and as parent and public concerns about the safety of data remain, the ethical use of data must be a focus for teachers. Teachers are the front-line communicators to parents and their communities about education. But as parents and the public at large express con- cerns over data use in education, they’re also dem- onstrating that they don’t fully trust educators to use data in ways that benefit students. Teachers have a new role to not only explain the value of data to parents and the community but also to demonstrate that they only and always use information in the best interest of students.

Teachers cannot gain valuable data use skills in a vacuum. There is much more to do to provide educa- tors the support they need to access, interpret, act on, and communicate data effectively and ethically, and this includes promoting data literacy among state and district leaders, and in teacher preparation programs. Teachers need preservice and ongoing instruction in using student data and their role in protecting it — training on FERPA compliance alone won’t lead to ethical data use. All these actors have a role to play to be sure that the public and teachers feel comfortable that data are a tool for helping students, not tracking, labeling, or shaming. K

References

Carlson, D., Borman, G.D., & Robinson, M. (2011). A multistate district-level cluster randomized trial of the impact of data-driven reform on reading and mathematics achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 33 (3), 378-398.

Earl, L.M. & Katz, S. (2006). Leading schools in a data-rich world: Harnessing data for school improvement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Gummer, E.S. & Mandinach, E.B. (in press). Building a conceptual framework for data literacy. Teachers College Record.

Hamilton, L., Halverson, R., Jackson, S.S., Mandinach, E., Supovitz, J.A., & Wayman, J.C. (2009). Using student achievement data to support instructional decision making. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation.

Konstantopoulos, S., Miller, S., van der Ploeg, A., Li, C.H., & Traynor, A. (2013). The impact of Indiana’s system of benchmark assessments on mathematics achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35 (4), 481-499.

Mandinach, E.B. (2012). A perfect time for data use: Using data-driven decision making to inform practice. Educational Psychologist, 47 (2), 71-85.

Shulman, L.S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15 (2), 4-14.

is important. And what teachers consider important data or evidence has real implications for what they will use.

States, districts, and educator preparation pro- grams must do more to promote teacher data lit- eracy and ethical use of data through policy, training, and practice.

the setting matters

Data literacy skills can become a powerful tool to inform teacher practice. Teachers need to use data, and they need to do it foremost in a way that is in the interest of their students. Student-focused data use includes:

• Using data to inform instruction;

• Using access to student data appropriately;

• Displaying data appropriately; and

• Disclosing and communicating data appropriately.

Responsible data use also includes knowing

when and when not to discuss a student’s

performance in public.

“Not only did the cat eat my homework, it went viral on YouTube.”

K1502_February.indd 28 12/19/14 10:31 AM

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JSD | www.learningforward.org June 2013 | Vol. 34 No. 336

theme INTERNATIONAL TRENDS

By Andrew Hargreaves and Michael Fullan

P rofessional capital has a fundamental con- nection to transforming teaching every day, and we’ve seen many examples of this at work in schools and school systems around the world. Here, we explore the powerful idea of capital and articulate its importance for professional work, profes-

sional capacity, and professional effectiveness. Systems that invest in professional capital recognize that education spending is an investment in developing human capital from early childhood to adulthood, leading to rewards of economic productivity and social cohesion in the next gen- eration (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).

Professional capital requires attention not only to po- litical and societal investments in education but also to leadership actions and educator needs, contributions, and career stages.

THE CONCEPT OF CAPITAL Many teachers find the concept of capital a difficult

idea because of where it comes from. Capital is not some- thing we’d normally associate with teaching. The origi- nal idea of capital comes from the economic sector, and whether you are Warren Buffett or Adam Smith or Karl Marx, one part of the idea is basically the same. Capital is something that adds value to net worth. If you want to get a return, you need to make an investment.

TWO APPROACHES TO TEACHING Right now, there are two visions for capital and how

it can be used to improve teaching in the U.S. and else- where. One is a business capital approach. In this view, the purpose of public education is increasingly to yield a short- term profit with quick returns for its investors. The pur- pose of public education is to be a market for technology, for testing products, for charter schools and companies and chains and their look-alikes in Sweden and England and other parts of the world.

There’s nothing wrong with business or making a profit. But when the overwhelming orientation of public education is to yield short-term profits in a fast market, it distorts fundamentally what it is that we do, and it carries troubling assumptions with it about teachers and teaching. One of the ways you increase the returns on public educa- tion in the short term is by reducing the cost of teaching, education’s greatest expense.

In the business capital view, teaching is technically sim- ple. Teaching doesn’t require rigorous training, hard work in universities, or extensive practice in schools. In this view, teaching can be learned over six weeks in the summer, as long as you are passionate and enthusiastic. Imagine if we said that about our doctors or architects or engineers.

A business capital approach says that teaching can be driven by data, that data give you all the answers, that numbers and spreadsheets will set you free. This business capital view of teaching also says that technology can often replace teachers.

THE POWER of PROFESSIONAL CAPITAL WITH AN INVESTMENT IN COLLABORATION, TEACHERS BECOME NATION BUILDERS

June 2013 | Vol. 34 No. 3 www.learningforward.org | JSD 37

theme INTERNATIONAL TRENDS

The opposite stance toward teaching is a professional capital approach. In this approach, teaching is hard. It’s technically difficult, for example, knowing the signs of As- perger’s, differentiating instruction, learning all the skills to deal with difficult adults. It requires technical knowledge, high levels of education, strong practice within schools, and continuous improvement over time that is undertaken collaboratively, and that calls for the development of wise judgment.

Over time, professional capital policies and practices build up the expertise of teachers individually and collec- tively to make a difference in the learning and achievement of all students. In a professional capital approach, teachers should and do work with technology to enhance teaching, but not where the mouse becomes a replacement for the teacher.

Our book spells out the three kinds of capital that comprise professional capital: human capital (the talent of individuals); social capital (the collaborative power of the group); and decisional capital (the wisdom and expertise to make sound judgments about learners that are cultivated over many years). That’s the vision of professional capital.

CAPITAL AT WORK A simple but powerful study from Carrie Leana of the

University of Pittsburgh helps to illustrate the idea of the relationship between human and social capital. She did a study in New York City with a sample of 130 elemen- tary schools (Leana, 2011). She measured three things. She looked at human capital — the qualities of the indi- viduals, their qualifications and competencies on paper. She measured social capital with questions like: To what extent do teachers in this school work in a trusting, col- laborative way to focus on learning and the engagement and improvement of student achievement? And then she measured math achievement in September and June as an indicator of teachers’ impact.

Leana found that schools with high social capital showed positive achievement outcomes. Schools with strong social and human capital together did even better. Most im- portant, Leana found that teachers with low human capital who happened to be working in a school with higher social capital got better outcomes than those in schools with lower social capital. Being in a school around others who are work- ing effectively rubs off on teachers and engages them.

Human and social capital are both important, but hu-

man capital is not as influential as social capital as a lead strategy. To enact change faster and more effectively, to reduce variation in effec- tive teaching in a school or between and among schools in terms of networks, our advice is to use social capital. Use the group to change the group. This means developing how teachers as a team or group can best identify and respond to the needs of individual students. Back this up with the human capital that comes with being able to attract the best people in the profession, develop them as they come in, and build on that to be effective.

To attract people to the profession, you need a good set of schools for those people to work in. Continuous professional de- velopment pays off in Finland, Singapore, Alberta, and Ontario. The best way you can support and motivate teachers is to create the conditions where they can be effective day after day, together. And this isn’t just about intraschool collaboration It’s about interschool and interdistrict collaboration. It’s about the whole profession.

DECISIONAL CAPITAL We know that both human and social capital have links to stu-

dent achievement. Decisional capital, a notion that comes from the field of law, is about how you develop your capabilities over time, particularly your capacity to judge. All professions involve judgment in situations and circumstances where the evidence and the answers aren’t incontrovertibly clear.

Judges have to judge because the facts of the case do not speak

This article is adapted from a keynote address by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan at Learning Forward’s Annual

Conference in Boston,

Mass., in December 2012.

The concept of professional

capital and how it can

affect the future of teaching

and public education is

also the subject of their

book, Professional Capital:

Transforming Teaching in Every

School (Teachers College

Press, 2012). Professional

Capital shows how to

demand more of the teaching

profession and from the systems that support it. The

book includes action guidelines for groups, individual

teachers, administrators, schools and districts, and

state and federal leaders. Available at http://store.

learningforward.org.

JSD | www.learningforward.org June 2013 | Vol. 34 No. 338

theme INTERNATIONAL TRENDS

for themselves. How do judges learn to judge? By dealing with many cases over many years, by themselves, with other people, in the courtroom, out of the courtroom reflectively, alone in- trospectively, and collectively with their colleagues. This is what all professionals do. In part, Finland does so well in education because of the amount of time teachers spend in their day out- side of the classroom. They spend less time in the classroom per day than any other country, which gives them time to reflect, discuss, and develop judgment.

THE ROLE OF CAREER STAGES In teachers’ development, we look at a couple of factors

that bear on the development of decisional capital. One is com- mitment: How enthusiastic, how dedicated, how driven by a moral purpose are you as a teacher? The other is capability: How good are you, can you do the job, can you manage a class of kids, can you differentiate instruction? Both of these things are important, but one is often confused for the other.

There are three career stages that are critical in considering the development of decisional capital. In the early career — one to three years’ experience — teachers are, on average, more enthusiastic than at any other point in their career. They are more committed, more dedicated. But, on average, they are less competent; there’s still a lot to learn.

In the later years of teaching — 22 years and onwards — we see that teachers’ commitment is, on average, declining. It has to do with many things — their lives, aging parents, experiences with change, principal turnover, etc. And their capabilities are all over the map.

The stereotype is that teachers late in their career are resist- ers, but, in fact, there are four types of teachers. There are the renewed, who are constantly learning and challenged. The dis- enchanted teachers were once very excited about change, but through negative experiences have become discouraged; however, they can be re-enchanted. Then there are the quiet ones. Introverts are more likely to work with two or three people rather than the entire school to make improvements, and that’s the best way to work with them. The fourth group is the resisters and reprobates. These are the educators that those running performance evalua- tions often focus on, the deadwood to get out of the way. While there may be a few teachers in this category, don’t confuse the other types of late-career teachers with them.

And then there are teachers in the mid-career range — with anywhere from four to 20 years’ experience. These are, on aver- age, the most committed and capable. Their time in teaching adds up to about 10,000 hours, which is the time that Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers tells us is how long it takes in any profes- sion to become the equivalent of orchestra class as a musician (Gladwell, 2008). If you want to play in the pub on a Saturday night, it will take you about 4,000 hours, which is about the equivalent of three years of teaching.

In teaching, do we want to create teachers who are good

enough to play in the pub on a Saturday night, with three years or so of experience? Or do we want to keep developing, to wire in all the skills and stretch the capacities, so educators reach that moment where they’re in the zone, where they can improvise with a range of strategies effortlessly? If so, it takes most teach- ers an investment of around 10,000 hours to get to that point.

This career stage is important — and it’s the one we com- monly neglect. We focus on the first three years to get teachers going. And then we focus on the people who may sometimes prove difficult at the end. We think we can leave the people in the middle alone. If we leave them alone, though, there’s the danger that things become too easy, that they won’t stretch themselves. And then we’re headed for a worrying end, and instead of quiet ones or disenchanted ones or especially renewed ones, we find ourselves dealing with reprobates — and we cre- ated them. We need to focus more on the teachers in the middle and to keep challenging and stretching them.

SOCIAL CAPITAL In considering how to create a professional capital culture,

it’s critical to know that there isn’t just one way to collabo- rate. Social capital is not only or sometimes even mainly about professional learning communities sitting down and looking at spreadsheets of student data together. Here are five examples from five countries that we’ve worked with that use social capi- tal in different ways.

Andrew Hargreaves, left, ([email protected]) is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College and cofounder of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. His website is www. andyhargreaves.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at @hargreavesbc.

Michael Fullan, right, ([email protected]) is professor emeritus and the former dean at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He is the special advisor to the premier and minister of education in Ontario, Canada. His website is http://michaelfullan.ca.

June 2013 | Vol. 34 No. 3 www.learningforward.org | JSD 39

The power of professional capital

Finland: Local curriculum development One of the things teachers do in Finland that makes them

effective is that they create curriculum together, school by school, district by district. They don’t just implement curricu- lum, they create curriculum together.

Singapore: Give away best ideas Singapore is the highest-performing country on the Pro-

gramme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and it’s a place where people excel at every level. Here, educators give away their best ideas to other people. Think of that at a school — this notion makes educators have to keep inventing new ideas to stay ahead. They don’t hog their ideas. How can you expect your teachers to collaborate if their schools compete?

Alberta: Collaborative innovation and inquiry Alberta is one of the two highest-performing provinces in

Canada. For the last 11 years, in collaboration with the govern- ment, the Alberta Teachers’ Association has spent 50% of its resources on professional development. The College of Alberta School Superintendents has also worked cooperatively to pro- mote inquiry and innovation in schools and districts. Profes- sional inquiry fostered by leaders at all levels has become central to the development of the profession.

Ontario: Collective responsibility and transparency When teachers look at data together in Ontario, they aren’t

just looking for quick fixes for how to lift up achievement scores. Behind every number is a child. Teachers sit together with the transparency of the data, and all teachers take collective respon- sibility for all children across grades. The teachers say, “They’re our children,” not “my children, my class.” It’s what’s behind the data, not what’s in the data that is most important for Ontario.

California Teachers Association: Teacher leaders drive system change

California is of the lowest-performing states in the U.S. Years ago, the California Teachers Association sued then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for several billion dollars. With the money that it won, the association collaboratively set up the Quality Educa- tion Investment Act for several hundred low-performing schools in the state. The early data indicate that with teachers as drivers of system change, achievement gains are being made, especially with Hispanic and African-American populations.

PUSH-PULL-NUDGE LEADS TO PROFESSIONAL CAPITAL Professional capital is a function of the interactive, multipli-

cative combination of the three kinds of capital discussed above. With our responsibility to move professional capital forward, proactive action is necessary. A combination of push, pull, and nudge will move systems forward. We explore a range of actions for leaders to take in our book, but here is a quick overview of

the push-pull-nudge idea. Push is when you assert, pay attention, and intervene for

more professional capital. When you push someone who is reluc- tant, they change, and they thank you afterwards. But you can be too pushy, and what started as a push for people’s own good can turn into a shove that i

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