Transcript Document

Principal Leadership for
Effective Use of
Professional Growth and
Effectiveness System (PGES) Data
December 9, 2014
Louisville, Kentucky
Welcome and Introduction
Dr. Patricia Kannapel
Coordinator, Kentucky College and Career Readiness Alliance
REL Appalachia
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Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Program
• U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education
Sciences (IES).
• RELs provide regional support for:
– Applied research and evaluation.
– Technical support and information sharing to build capacity to use
data for improved education outcomes.
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REL Appalachia’s Mission
• Meet the applied research and technical support needs of
Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
• Bring evidence-based information to policymakers and
practitioners:
– Provide support for a more evidence-reliant education system.
– Inform policy and practice for states, divisions, schools, and other
stakeholders.
– Focus on high-priority, discrete issues and build a body of knowledge
over time.
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What Does REL Appalachia Do?
• Assess regional research needs by monitoring emerging education issues
and challenges.
• Maintain and refine research alliances through ongoing dialogue between
educators in each region and researchers.
• Provide analytic technical support to increase use of data and analysis to
understand policies and programs, make decisions, and support effective
practice.
• Conduct research and evaluation studies of rigor and method appropriate
to the questions the studies attempt to answer.
• Distribute results of REL research across the region.
• Coordinate and partner with other RELs and federal, state, and local
education research and technical assistance organizations.
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Research Alliances
• What is a research alliance?
– A partnership between education stakeholders and REL Appalachia.
• What is the purpose of a research alliance?
– As partners, REL Appalachia and alliance members develop and carry
out a research and analytic technical assistance agenda on priority
topics.
• Who are the education stakeholders in an alliance?
– May include representatives from one or more schools, divisions,
state education agencies, and other organizations (e.g., colleges and
universities).
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Please Tweet!
• To Tweet during this event:
– @REL_Appalachia
– @waymandatause
• Use hashtag:
– #PGES
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Principal Leadership for
Effective Use of PGES Data
Dr. Jeffrey C. Wayman
Wayman Services, LLC
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Overview of Workshop
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Why Are We Here?
• PGES has placed extra data demands on principals.
• We can do this in compliance mode:
– Check the boxes.
– Get back to what we were doing.
• We can do this to effect improvement.
– But that’s hard.
– That’s why we’re here.
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Your Reality
• It’s 2014. Everybody’s got education data.
• You can use PGES data or it can use you.
– More specifically, if you don’t have a plan to use
PGES data, it will use you.
• The state gave you a gift (I know, I know…).
– Embrace it.
– Grow it school wide.
– Add your own data, methods, approaches.
– Put your fingerprint on it – make it yours.
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Goals of Today’s Meeting
• Learn about specific leadership strategies
principals can use to lead staff in using PGES
data for instructional improvement.
• Help you with the foundation of your
2015/16 PGES plans.
• Help you with your immediate PGES
leadership needs.
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Structure of Today’s Meeting
• Here’s what we’ll do today:
– Set the stage.
– Learn about 12 leadership strategies for helping
faculty use data.
– Participate in three activities to put these
strategies into practice.
– Pull it all together.
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Setting the Stage
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What Is Data?
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State assessments.
Formative assessments.
Local assessments.
Grades, quizzes.
Student histories.
Free lunch.
Observation.
Student voice data.
• Ethnicity.
• Attendance.
• Parental info.
• Disciplinary info.
• Work samples.
• Growth data.
• Reflection data.
• AND MORE!
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My Lens
• Focus on instructional improvement.
• Data are used in the course of everyday work,
not in addition to everyday work.
• Data use is not an event.
• Structures and practices develop culture.
• Data don’t “drive” anything – professional
judgment does.
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The Principal and Data Use
• Data use lives and dies in the principal’s office.
• But it’s hard:
– Levers come from above and below.
– University prep programs are insufficient.
– Building the plane as we fly it.
• This can be workable – even enjoyable.
• Learn and employ concrete leadership strategies
specific to data use.
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Research behind Today’s Event
• Research paper: Using Data to Inform Practice:
Effective Principal Leadership Strategies.
– Reviewed research to identify 12 leadership
strategies to support faculty data use.
– Examined which strategies principals used.
• It’s on my website: www.waymandatause.com.
– Click on the PUBLICATIONS tab.
J. C. Wayman et al. (2012). Using data
to inform practice: effective principal
leadership strategies. Paper presented
at the Annual Meeting of the American
Educational Research Association,
Vancouver, Canada.
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The 12 Strategies
• Asking the right
questions.
• Facilitating collaboration
around data.
• Communicating with
data.
• Focusing data use on a
broad context.
• Data system support.
• Distributing leadership.
• Fostering common
understandings.
• Engaging in personal
learning opportunities.
• Goal setting.
• Ensuring adequate
professional learning.
• Modeling data use.
• Structuring time to use
data.
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Describing the
12 Leadership Strategies
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Grouping the 12 Strategies
• The strategies fall naturally in groups.
• Grouping! Not ordering. Not importance.
• 4 groups:
– Base-setting strategies.
– Functional strategies.
– Embedded strategies.
– Principal-specific strategies.
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Base-Setting Strategies
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Base-Setting Strategies
• These strategies are ones to use in setting the
core culture of data use.
• It’s pretty hard without these.
• Base-setting strategies are:
– Data system support.
– Facilitating collaboration around data.
– Focusing data use on a broad context.
– Fostering common understandings.
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Data System Support
Supporting staff to use data systems to get
information from data and improve practice.
• Focus on the data, not the system.
• Show value of system by focusing on
immediately relevant problems.
• Embed system use in everyday work.
• Create feedback loops that help you understand
how staff understand the system.
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Facilitating Collaboration around Data
Structuring ways for staff to work together with
data on issues specific to their practice.
• Collaboration is the lifeblood of data use.
• Creating time to collaborate is important, but
structuring what happens during that time is
really important.
• Be there. Participate in collaborative meetings
with faculty and staff.
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Focusing Data Use on a Broad Context
Ensuring that data use goes beyond high-stakes
tests to examine the broad spectrum of student
learning.
• This is natural to teachers – they always think of
the “whole student.”
• Multiple data points are key.
• State tests are but one piece to the puzzle.
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Fostering Common Understandings
Creating opportunities to build shared ideas
regarding teaching, learning, and how data serve.
• Think of it as “shared mental models” (Senge).
• All activities are created with this in mind.
• It’s the process that’s important
• Teachers like this. It respects them, involves them,
P. M. Senge. (2006). The fifth discipline:
gives them a voice.
The art and practice of the learning
organization, NY: Doubleday.
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Functional Strategies
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Functional Strategies
• These strategies work with particular activities
around using data.
• Functional strategies are:
– Asking the right questions.
– Communicating with data.
– Goal setting.
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Asking the Right Questions
Providing support for staff to identify relevant
problems and choose appropriate approaches.
• Helps staff focus data use and avoid being
overwhelmed by data.
• Don’t let it slide – principals must hold staff
accountable for good questioning.
• Simple, explicit professional development on
questioning will help.
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Communicating with Data
Using a variety of strategies that clarify for staff
and parents how data are used and what they
mean.
• Clarity about why data are used helps data use
become non-threatening.
• Tell your story, or someone else will.
• Strategies might include informal discussion,
memos, newsletters, websites, etc.
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Goal Setting
Setting benchmarks, and tailoring data use to
support attainment of those benchmarks.
• Lay out a clear path and destination.
• Goals should communicate what we’re about.
• Set goals collaboratively.
• Support the work of reaching the destination.
• People don’t naturally set hard-to-reach goals.
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BREAK
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Embedded Strategies
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Embedded Strategies
• These strategies are threaded throughout all
strategies.
• It’s hard to imagine employing any strategy
without at least a piece of these.
• Embedded strategies are:
– Distributing leadership.
– Ensuring adequate professional learning.
– Structuring time to use data.
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Distributing Leadership
Creating opportunities for staff to perform, create,
and own data-related activities.
• Creates investment and ownership.
• Lean heavily on collaboration and support staff.
• Be careful, though:
– Dose out slowly – this is hard to do up front.
– Are you really creating “distributed power”?
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Ensuring Adequate Professional Learning
Ensuring that staff consistently engage in
immediately relevant professional learning
opportunities.
• Don’t get caught up in traditional formats.
• Embed it in everyday work.
• Think expertise, not experts.
• Everything is a professional learning opportunity.
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Structuring Time to Use Data
Scheduling dedicated time for teachers to examine
and reflect upon data.
• Structures abound: planning time, team
meetings, etc.
• Structure and support what goes on in that time.
• Time to process and reflect is critical.
• Particularly related to collaboration.
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Principal-Specific Strategies
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Principal-Specific Strategies
• These strategies are ones that are centered on
the principal’s own practice.
• Principal-specific strategies are:
– Engaging in personal learning opportunities.
– Modeling data use.
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Engaging in Personal Learning Opportunities
Improving personal skills through workshops,
classes, reading, or collaboration.
• Gandhi: “There go my people. I must catch them,
for I am their leader.”
• Includes both data skills and leadership skills.
• Enables good modeling.
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Modeling Data Use
Ensuring that staff see the principal using data in
effective ways.
• Collaboration and meetings are a good forum for
modeling.
• Provides staff an exemplar and sets a direction.
• But … the principal doesn’t have to be perfect.
Just good.
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Research on Use
of the 12 Strategies
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Principals’ Use of the Strategies
• Studied principals in three districts diverse in size,
achievement, SES, ethnic makeup.
• Principals employed only three strategies with
any frequency:
– Focusing data use on broad context.
– Facilitating collaboration around data.
– Distributing leadership.
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More on Principals’ Use of Strategies
• Focused data use on broad context, but kept it
shallow:
– Missed opportunities to mix with traditional
information use.
• Facilitated collaboration, but didn’t structure it:
– “Here’s your time … now go collaborate.”
• Distributed work, not leadership:
– Kept ownership very close to themselves.
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Two Big Takeaways
• Two interpretations of this research are
particularly important for our PGES work:
1. Principals did employ these 3 strategies, but
weren’t intentional about it.
2. The strategies they employed fitted well with
familiar, existing structures.
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Let’s Wrap This Up
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Be intentional!
Be subtle – most of these will go unnoticed.
Don’t do these strategies all at once.
Focus on capacity building. Let them lead.
Cut yourself some slack – nobody prepared
you to do this. But your teachers will love you
if you do.
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PGES Leadership Activities
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Putting It into Practice
• Three activities around PGES data:
1. Communicating with PGES data.
2. Teacher conferences with PGES data.
3. Distributed leadership in PGES.
• Discussion groups – aim is to get you talking and
connecting around this work.
• Widen your learning group.
• Shareback and whole-group discussion.
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Activity One:
Communicating with PGES Data
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Communicating with PGES Data
• Lots of groups have education data.
– Tell your story, or someone else will.
• This strategy gets you in front of PGES data.
– Control the narrative.
• Communicate about both data and process.
– How we do teaching and learning – and how data
serve these.
• Communicate both externally and internally.
– Parents, teachers, public, students.
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Activity – PGES Communication
• Step 1: Discuss in your group the various forms of
communication listed.
– What are you doing? How are you doing it? What
are you not doing? What’s easy? What’s hard?
• Step 2: Discuss in your group other forms of
communication that were not listed.
• Appoint someone to record answers.
• We’ll share back in whole-group discussion.
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Shareback – PGES Communication
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What were you doing and how?
What were you not doing?
What was easy? What was hard?
What did you add to the list?
If you’re willing, hand in your sheet – I can use
these to inform my next events for you.
• After lunch, we’ll mix up the groups for the next
activity.
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LUNCH
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Activity Two:
Teacher Conferences with
PGES Data
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Teacher Conferences with PGES Data
• You know how to do teacher conferences.
• I want to disrupt that a bit.
– Comfort the afflicted … afflict the comfortable.
• PGES is ambitious about conferences.
– In other words – there’s not enough time, right?!
• Still, those conferences can be the hub of your
improvement efforts.
• I can’t give you a list – they’re too contextual.
– But I can give you ideas and get you talking.
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Activity – PGES Conferences
• Three topics to discuss (did you mix your groups?):
– Connecting conferences throughout the year.
– Connecting conferences to Personal Growth Plans.
– Supporting teachers’ practice between
conferences.
• For each: Is there a plan to do this? If so, how? ...
Barriers? ... Facilitators?
• Appoint someone to record answers.
• We’ll share back in whole-group discussion.
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Shareback – PGES Conferences
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Was there a plan to do this? If so, how?
What would help these happen?
What’s keeping these from happening?
Did anyone discuss different topics?
If you’re willing, hand in your sheet – I can use
these to inform my next events for you.
• After the break, we’ll mix up the groups for the
last activity.
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BREAK
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Activity Three:
Distributed Leadership in PGES
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Distributed Leadership in PGES
• You have a time problem. You can’t do PGES all
on your own.
• Sure, you can get people to do tasks for you.
• But to make this a capacity-building initiative,
you need to develop leaders.
• Not all at once – look to build tiny chunks of
leadership.
• Think more about expertise than roles.
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Activity – Distributed Leadership
• Who helps you with PGES data?
– Role, not name.
– What they do.
• What one area takes a lot of your time? Why?
• As a group, compile a list.
• Brainstorm ideas for distributing leadership into this
area.
– What expertise do you have at your disposal?
– What might they do?
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Shareback – Distributed Leadership
• What were the various roles that help you with
PGES data, and what do they do?
• What areas were taking a lot of time – and why?
• What ideas did you have for distributing
leadership into the one area?
– What various forms of expertise were there?
Roles? What might they do?
• If you’re willing, hand in your sheet – I can use
these to inform my next events for you.
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BREAK
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Pulling It All Together
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Debrief
•
•
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Elephant in the room: CIITS.
What are you going to do now?
What is going to be hard to do?
What do you want to do, but don’t think you
can?
• What did you learn today that really helped you?
• What do you need to learn in the coming weeks,
month, and year?
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What We’ve Done
• To use data effectively, you have to have a frame.
– Might as well be PGES.
• We created a base from which to build an
ongoing PGES plan.
• No order to the strategies. Pick and choose.
– Employ multiple strategies in small ways.
• It’s all about context.
– What fits your school? What fits you?
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Where We Go from Here
• Two more events – one in spring, one in
summer.*
• Targeted toward more specific areas of PGES.
– You have the base, now we can build on it.
• Designed to help you implement a functional
PGES initiative in 2015/16.
*Pending project approval by IES.
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What You Need to Do
• Work with your core team to plan your PGES
initiative for 2015/16.
• Try some things out so you know what works.
• Connect soon and often with your learning
group.
• Communicate with me. Help me make the
best events for you.
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Final Thoughts
• It’s 2014. Everybody’s got education data.
• You can use PGES data or it can use you.
– Will you have a plan?
• Use PGES to your benefit.
– Embrace it.
– Grow it school wide.
– Add your own data, methods, approaches.
– Put your fingerprint on it – make it yours.
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Connect with Us!
www.relappalachia.org
@REL_Appalachia
www.waymandatause.com
www.facebook.com/datause
[email protected]
@waymandatause
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