Elementary School Principal Danielle Price uses data and close observation to make decisions in all areas of her school. In the cafeteria, staff watch closely to see what foods get kids to clean their plates and ask for a second helping. At events like Board Game Night, Ms. Price tracks parent attendance to see which families and students are participating most often.
But no data is more important than students’ scores on the assessment tests that the school administers to students every fall, winter and spring. The test results show in detail which skills students have mastered and which concepts they still need to learn.
To keep students and their academic needs front and center, the Elementary School has created two Rainbow Walls in the teachers’ lounge. The walls have bands of color representing each of the scoring bands on the assessment tests. The red band at the bottom of each wall represents students in the lowest achievement band; the blue band at the top is the highest. Every student has two color-coded score cards – one on the math wall, one on the reading wall – that can move up or down as the year progresses, to track their growth.
The concept came out of a professional development session that Zoe Luke, the Elementary School’s instructional coach, attended during a conference at the end of last school year. Ms. Luke and Ms. Price thought that the visual aspect of the wall paired well with their mutual desire to make data-driven decisions for students. “We want to be looking at every student individually,” Ms. Luke said. “Teachers have so much to do, they don’t have time to break down this data for each student. So the idea was for me to break it down for them, so they can use it.”
Both Ms. Luke and Ms. Price are fans of the book “Putting Faces on the Data,” which emphasizes the importance of treating students as individuals, not just test scores. To that end, each card features not only the child’s test scores but also their school photos. “We’re putting the information in a place where teachers are constantly seeing it,” said Ms. Price, “but we are also putting faces on there to show this is a real life, a real child that we’re dealing with.”
Teachers often use the information to shape their lessons during Hawk Time, a daily block of 45 minutes in which students meet in small, skills-based groups with teachers, intervention specialists, and teaching fellows. Two days a week, the students focus on math; two days, on reading; and on Fridays, they assess their progress for the week and set goals for the following week.
Fourth grade teacher Amanda Smith said that the data captured on the Rainbow Wall is critical to her work with individual students. By checking the cards for information about students’ needs, she can develop lesson plans for the small-group work, and set up related lessons in the online practice programs that students use.
Having the test scores at hand has helped Ms. Smith talk with students and parents alike about their academic progress. Those conversations can be particularly difficult for students who are well below grade-level expectations. Having an objective source of information about a child’s skills “gives teachers a way to talk with parents so that it doesn’t feel accusatory, that it’s more objective,” she said. And working with students to set their own goals gives kids a feeling of control over their own learning and achievement.
“We want to give them that sense of success, even if they’re below grade level,” Ms. Smith said. “Then, when they make progress, we can celebrate that, to show them: ‘You are really doing well here.’“
