U DID IT!
Using student achievement data as the basis for making instructional decisions

by Mary Ruzga

According to Dr. Lorin Anderson, “Teachers should be agents of reform, not objects of reform. In other words, in the past, staff development has been something done to teachers rather than coming from within teachers.” In an attempt to support staff development from within, the Mathematics and Science Unit of the South Carolina State Department of Education has collaborated with educators around the state to develop two support frameworks that promote teachers as agents of reform.
 
The first framework, Creating Excellence in Elementary and Middle Mathematics (CEEMM) focused on teaming and has been successfully used by thousands of teachers in South Carolina. The second framework, U DID IT! has been developed and opportunities to serve as pilot sites will soon be offered. Training for pilot sites will occur in the summer of 2006. When available, information regarding training dates, etc. will be published in MathMate and posted on the www.myscmsu.org Web site.

U DID IT! is an acronym for Using Data for Instructional Decisions = Informed Teaching.  It is a year-two companion to the well-received teaming framework, CEEMM. In brief, U DID IT! is a process by which instructional decisions are made based on student achievement data.
 
Users of CEEMM plan for mathematics as grade level teams and meet monthly to discuss how the major concepts of mathematics build across grades. As a result, all mathematics teachers in a school have an in-depth understanding of how their grade level expectations support and fit into the total school mathematics requirements. Because of their year-long team planning and discussions regarding vertical articulation of content, the horizontal (grade level) teams and the vertical (school-wide) teams are agents of reform - Professional Learning Teams. Those Professional Learning Teams are now in a position to examine student data more in-depth and make team instructional decisions based on data.

According to A Facilitator’s Guide to Professional Learning Teams (SERVE) “Effective Professional Learning Teams are driven by a sense of purpose. They accomplish good things for students because they focus their collective energy toward an instructional goal that addresses specific student needs (emphasis added).  A strong sense of purpose and a clear sense of where they’re going can also keep teams on track after their initial enthusiasm for a new initiative wears down.” Therefore, the U DID IT! framework has two goals:

1. to support the use of data driven instructional decision making and;
2.  to keep CEEMM teams focused on the improvement of mathematics instruction.

Participants in U DID IT! training will discover how different assessments methods reveal different levels of student understanding, and how to use information about their students to enhance their instruction. Specific assessment tools such as teacher and textbook generated tests and quizzes, PACT scores, School Quality Benchmark tests, daily student work, as well as commercial diagnostic/benchmark testing programs will be examined to determine ways each can be used to deepen teacher understanding of students’ progress in mastering  mathematics at specific grades.  Teachers will come to understand the power of using multiple ways to assess student learning and how to use the data from these assessments to adjust instructional practice to meet student needs.