Finally, “data walls” touch at least the intellectual growth of students. “Data walls” meet the professional obligation of doing what the district and principal wants, i.e., focusing on improving students’ grasp of content and skills on the state test. It is a compromise that satisfies the value of professional autonomy–teachers create and tailor the displays of data in their classrooms. In short, they satisfice to satisfy.įor schools and teachers, “data walls” are satisfices. Then they manage these jerry-built compromises. They know that accepting trade-offs among these cherished values is inevitable–they construct compromises. Teachers do what other professionals in medicine, law, criminal justice system, social work, and therapy do: because three highly prized values come into conflict and there is no way to fulfill one without harming the others, teachers figure out good enough compromises that partially fulfill what they seek. When faced with such trilemmas, there is no one best solution to such a common but sticky situation. Thus, the clash of values that teachers hold dear: holistic development of children and youth, obligation to mind what school and district officials require to be done in classrooms, and professional autonomy to do what is best for student learning. Teacher autonomy to go beyond the test, such as to teach cooperation, respecting others, and making judgments, is seriously diminished given the available time. Consequences of low student scores fall upon teachers and students (e.g., scores are used to evaluate school, teacher, and student performance rewards and penalties accompany scores on tests). Teachers also desire professional autonomy but are held accountable by school, district, and state officials for their students reaching proficiency and higher on the reading and math portions of tests they must give. Teachers also embrace their professional obligations so they must give those tests. They want their students to grow in more ways than answering accurately multiple choice questions. On the one hand, most teachers prize a holistic view of student performance (e.g., intellectual, social, psychological growth) and find that tests students are required to take seldom capture the content, skills, and behaviors that teachers seek for their students. Concerned about the shame attending students’ low performance on district and state tests, teachers glommed onto “retail” data as a tool for improving student test scores with one outcome being the building of “data walls.”Īnd here is the trilemma that teachers face. The focus on test scores since the early 1980s–remember A Nation at Risk report–has given critics the argument that NCLB further narrowed both curriculum and instruction by holding teachers and schools accountable for results. Those data may (or may not) become a basis for policy changes. “Wholesale” data are school-by-school and district numbers that are aggregated and sent to administrators, teachers, and parents. With the onset of the mantra “data driven instruction” largely stemming from the accountability features of the federal law, No Child Left Behind (2002), school boards, superintendents, principals, and teachers have heard time and again the importance of gathering, analyzing, and using test data school-wide to improve instruction and in classrooms for students to plan individual strategies. Whether to use these “data walls” to spur individual students to improve their academic performance or have data displays for the entire class without individuals being noted or not have them at all in a classroom but use individual and class data only among teachers or school leadership teams has been debated in blogs, media, and journals for the past decade (see here, here, here, and here). Of course, most students find out who is who. Usually, students have numbers or aliases assigned to mask their identity. In elementary schools, I have seen pasted on a wall or cork board, “data walls” that look like these: Over the past few years I have visited many classrooms.
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