Friday June 29, 2007

Today we started off wit Liz City who advocated for us educators to use data in order to discern how to improve education in our schools. I spoke to another participant during this session about how her school used data to seek our specific students to be enrolled within a special program where the students who were previously unsuccessful, moved towards getting credit towards graduation. The model they set up was to have two teachers, where one was a content area teacher and the other was a special education teacher.

What the participant cited was that this model forced teachers to differentiate their instruction and meet these higher needs students at their level. She stated that the program was effective in their purpose and that they used the data they had within schools (i.e. attendance, test scores, etc.) to choose students who would benefit from this program.

Other outcomes were that teachers had to sit down with IEPs and really understand what each student's needs were. This got me thinking about how my school could try to create a program such as this in order to better serve our students with speical needs.

After having a conversation this particular participant, Liz City outlined some tips on how to use data to improve schools. The few things that struck me where that if educators have seen successes in the use of data, there shouldn't necessarily be a search for other methods to use data for the sake of using data. Also, she stated that it's important to use protocals when using data about specific teachers. This got me thinking about how my school along with the other Envision Schools use protocals in order to better instruction and it made me feel that my school and my organization were on the right track.

After this session, we had a very lengthy session with Richard Elmore, who I feel like I did not learn too much from. He cited excellent research, but throughout his session, we were never able to delve into discussion about any of the problems within schools cited by volunteering participants. When someone had a question or mentioned a problem, I feel that Richard just cited his own experience and prevented possible fruitful discussions about those specific school dilemmas mentioned (also, there were way too many anectdotes).

The final session by Jim Nehring was one where I learned a great deal. The "conspirators" he mentioned I felt were things that all people in education could relate to. The great thing that he did wasn't just creating this term, but he used historical evidence to back his claims in a very concrete and efficient manner. He spoke of six tendancies that education has held through the course of two centuries in America. The ones that really stood out for me were that within education existed a "fear factor" where people within education would implement or react based on fears. Also, he cited that education through the course of history favored groups to the detriment of other, non-favored groups. I really enjoyed how efficiently and effectively he cited these problems which at first glance, educators don't discuss at length, but once these issues are pointed out, are discussed at length about. These tendancies are important to recognize and deal with so that all of us educators could enact a systemic change within an extremely flawed system.