Data Driven Decision Making

I don't know if the TV show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader," is still on the air, but I hope that the audience here has seen it or heard of it, since I plan to use the premise of the show to make a larger point.

Adults are brought on to the program and are tested by questions that are integral content points of a typical 5th grade classroom in the US. The adult contestants are usually productive citizens who have found a way to contribute to their families and communities. The premise itself speaks loudly about the importance of 5th grade content. You see, if the content were critical to an adult's efficacy, the adult contestants would answer every or most questions correctly. Instead, the contestants rarely know all of the answers because the material is not critical in and of itself. What fifth graders need to know as it applies to adulthood and citizenship is not really represented by the 5th grade curriculum.

In short, the information covered in 5th grade is inconsequential to the productive adult. He or she can be very high functioning in his field without knowing very much material that is covered in 5th grade. This is true because the knowledge imparted in 5th grade is chosen on the basis of what the 5th grade mind can process. In other words, the skills are more important than the content.

This principle remains true at all levels of education, although to different degrees. I personally completed a BA at a private liberal arts college, and an MS at a well-respected university. The importance of most of the raw content I processed in these programs is dubious. I would venture a guess that I have maintained a knowledge base that includes about 10% of the information I have been asked to learn and to know.

What this has to do with Data Driven Decision Making, as it applies to secondary education, is as follows: Data Driven Decision Making has the potential to make a mess of education.

Presupposing that the date collectd presents a genuine reflection of the knowledge imparted and acquired by a given student (and such a supposition is itself questionable), the data collected is based on knowledge that is dubious in and of itself. To be a productive citizen, does every person need to have a facility with chemistry, with biology, with literature, with geometry? The question is rhetorical. We all know the answer?

The composition of the high school curriculum is generally formulated on the basis of exposure to ways of thinking. The type of thinking that is integral to an uderstaning of chemistry is peculiar to the chemistry classroom. Similarly, the type of thinking that is critical to the successful navigation of a literature lesson is peculiar to the literature classroom. The raw content in each and all cases is inconsequential and relatively unimportant.

In case I haven't been clear in pulling all of these points together, chew on this. Schools across the counrty are currently engaged in implmenting data teams, and RtI programs, as well as school specific programs, that are dedicating enormaous amounts of money and time to the creation of assessments which are supposed to provide diagnoses and prescriptions which will 'cure' learning ills. Because the data being collected is itself dubious, the resultant 'interventions' are dubious to the 2nd power.

I will end with a simple example. A 10th grade English teacher finds that one of her classes hasn't yet mastered an understanding of figurative language. The test item asked students to say what is meant when a character is described as 'cold as ice.' The assessments all agree that such facility is necessary. What does the teacher do? Tutoring? Remediation? Collaborative learning? More work sheets?

What if the test item itself is flawed? What if the students answered incorrectly because the context used in the assessment was unfamiliar and unrelated to their classroom curruculum materials? What if this question came up on the fourth consecutive day of standardized testing, and the students were disinclined to care?

Hopefully, the above was clear enough in touching on all of the concerns associated with data driven decision making. More information is almost always better than not enough information. But operating in response to information that is not what it purports to be sets off an expensive chain reaction where gobs of time and energy are expended in attacking a problem that may not be there, or in treating an illness that is merely a symptom.

More later.