Why is data and data-based decision making such a critical part of instruction and intervention?
Why is data and data-based decision making such a critical part of instruction and intervention?
In this video, Mary Little, Professor and Program Coordinator of the Department of Child, Family, and Community Services at the University of Central Florida discusses why data and data-based decision making such a critical part of instruction and intervention.
Question: Why is data and data-based decision making such a critical part of instruction and intervention?
Answer: I think each of us as professionals and as educators within our schools, sometimes we feel bombarded with the amounts of data that are available to us or mandated for our use within our schools and within our classrooms. I think it is incumbent upon us as professionals, as teachers to take a look at the specific data sources that really will address the needs and the question that we have about our students’ learning. And so there is where the power of data are. If we really diagnose, take a look at the data that are available to us with the purpose of addressing our students’ needs, that is where the power lies with data-based decision making.
Research has shown considerably that if teachers use the data as part of their instructional methods, it shouldn’t be outside, it shouldn’t be some mysterious something that teachers are afraid of or feel that are mandated for use, it really provides for each of us all this data, what specifically do our students’ need. And whether the data are from state assessment results, well that is very broad, but within our classroom the different curriculum-based measures, the different observational techniques, the portfolios, the different rubrics, all of those are data sources that me as the individual teacher or with colleagues — other teachers within our grade-level team or as students move forward and are needing more intensive intervention that a teacher can use and with other colleagues on their multi-tiered systems of support team — to really make some decisions about what specifically we are wanting to— how we will intervene with our students. Ultimately, what drives teachers and educators is student success. And really data that teachers have access to empowers teachers to meet those individual goals which then meet the needs of why we became teachers, which is to successfully teach all of our students even those that are more difficult to find the solutions to.
