Data plays a critical role in the implementation of the community schools strategy. Data is analyzed to identify the needs and assets of a school community, pinpoint collective priorities, set goals, and monitor the progress of the implemented integrated supports.
According to Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, “teachers and school leaders today have access to huge amounts of data about their students, and in many schools a lot of time is spent in meetings talking about data, with no real impact on student learning. Effective schools are clear about which data they look at and why. Even with a quality performance assessment system, educators can sometimes become overfocused on rubric scores and miss important information that explains why students may be struggling.”
In November, the Southern Coast Regional Technical Assistance Center (SC R-TAC) hosted a virtual webinar focusing on the why, what, and how to use community schools data. According to the CA Community Schools Framework, “data is a tool for improvement that students, staff, families, and community members can access, an instrument for reflection and instead of an instrument of accountability – a flashlight not a hammer.”
Data literacy, collection, and tracking is a critical aspect of the Community Schools journey. Understanding and gathering the sources and types of data will help with analysis, decision-making, and creating innovations. Community Schools begin this practice of data gathering and analyzing around the start of the Needs Assessment process and builds from there. This work begins with gathering existing data of your school and community to serve as starting points to understand the current state of your school site. This data gathering can be used to identify existing student support activities, student academic data, current partnerships; community data such as food resources, grocery stores, libraries, crime data, and access to transportation and other services.
Since some students do not show up on the dashboard, it’s imperative that community schools make intentional efforts to uplift the voices, narratives and experiences of the most marginalized students. In addition to analysing quantitative data, it’s important to gather qualitative data through focus groups, listening circles, empathy interviews, student work and home visits.
During the webinar, attendees had the opportunity to use data in community schools. First, attendees self-selected small group data huddles based on their own experience with data. Attendees then participated in a case study by analyzing given data to answer reflective questions.
The learning will continue with a data deeper dive on Feb. 25, 2025. The focus of that webinar will be:
- Leading and Lagging Indicators
- Data Collection Methods
- Continuous Improvement