Continuous Improvement in a Data Driven World: Data Wise While Seeing the Face of a Child – AA #3718

Academy for administrators seeking a “deep dive” into assessment and achievement data analysis
Presented by Dr. Don White, retired Illinois school superintendent and data expert

Participants will receive information about data analysis best practices, continuous improvement frameworks, and district, school and student level achievement data (e.g., Illinois Assessment of Readiness results, PARCC results, and Illinois School Report Cart comparisons). Participants will develop and plan for continuous improvement using comprehensive data prepared during the academy. Participants will need to bring a fully charged laptop with Microsoft Excel installed to use the four Excel files that will be used during the academy. Three of the files provide opportunities for participants to analyze district, school, and grade level data from the Illinois School Report. Participants will also need to bring their user name and password for accessing PARCC and IAR data from IWAS so they can download their data and enter it into a fourth Excel file which gives them an opportunity to analyze student performance at the district, school, cohort, and student levels. Please note that the models will not work in Google Sheets or with a Chromebook. 

Prerequisite:  at least intermediate-level expertise in Excel; expert-level preferred.

For the Application/Dissemination, participants will demonstrate how they will share their analyses in their districts and how they will coach others to use the data and analyses, and explain which Continuous Improvement Framework has the greatest potential to be implemented in their districts.

Though not a follow-up to AA 3020, Evidence Based Leadership: Using Data to Drive Immediate and Lasting Improvements, this academy derives from it and meets participants’ expressed demand for the opportunity and training to look more deeply into assessment data.

Some actual participants’ comments:

• Don's knowledge and expertise was greatly appreciated! Thanks for your help and for being patient :)
• I loved the format for a team - was a great day!
• Really enjoyed the data mining and learning so many tricks in Excel
• Loved the conversation piece to the academy. How to find and decipher data was great. Found Dr. White to be an awesome presenter.