KnowledgeBases > The School Improvement KnowledgeBase > Element 3 > Activity 1 > Task 3: Collect School, Student, and Teacher Data
A school is more than just a place to teach the basic academic subjects. It is a learning organization comprised of students, parents, teachers, support staff members, and administrators existing within a community. When painting a picture of the school, the school improvement team must look at a range of factors addressing demographics, student achievement, curriculum and instruction, teachers, parents and the community, the school's culture and environment, and non-academic support structures. Understanding how these factors affect the school's performance will impact the success of the school improvement team's efforts.
- Sub-Task 1: Demographic and Student Acheivement Data
- Sub-Task 2: Curriculum and Instruction Data
- Sub-Task 3: Qualitative Data - Surveys, etc.
- Sub-Task 4: Professional Learning Data
- Sub-Task 5: Parent and Community Data
- Sub-Task 6: School Culture
- Sub-Task 7: Organization
- Sub-Task 8: Safety
- Sub-Task 9: Non-Academic Student Support
Using data effectively involves understanding how to use it and being aware of the challenges that entails. The lists offered from Getting Excited About Data (2nd ed): Combining People, Passion and Proof to Maximize Student Achievement highlight how high performing schools use data as well as listing challenges and impediments faced.
This resource describes in "plain English, some basic concepts in statistics that every writer should know."
Developed by the five Comprehensive Technical Assistance content centers, the Handbook on Effective Implementation of School Improvement Grants aims to bolster the effective implementation of the intervention models and strategies outlined in the 2009 School Improvement Grant program. This section addresses using the school's operational data.
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