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Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast Episode 21: Coaches Unlocking the Power of Data: A Chat with Stephanie Brenner
Imagine having a powerful tool to guide instructional coaching, identify at-risk students, and help prioritize needs. With our guest, Stephanie Brenner, we're about to unfold the multifaceted role of data in shaping education.
Stephanie, an expert in her field, enlightens us on various data types - formative, summative, and screening. She elaborates on how using these data types can optimize coaching strategies. We delve into data's role as a snapshot, highlighting how it aids in spotting students at risk while illuminating areas that need attention. Given the significant impact of data on student success, it is crucial to take its interpretation seriously.
We continue our journey into the world of data with a detailed look at screening data. Stephanie guides us on utilizing this data to steer instruction, draw insights from building data, comprehend cohort trends, and determine curriculum strengths and needs. She also shares prudential methods to identify predictable problems and correlate screening data with state scores. We wrap up by discussing how data can be used to plan and address predictable issues, focusing on student performance rather than teacher performance to stimulate a willingness for new approaches. Stephanie's insights into using data effectively are invaluable for anyone involved in education.
As we strive to significantly impact education, we appeal to our listeners to help Compass PD achieve its ambitious goal of influencing the learning of 1 million students. Tune in to this episode to learn, grow, and make a difference in the world of education.
Hello, hello, hello. Dr Keri Hepburn here from Compass PD, and we just want to welcome you to the Compass PD podcast today. If you've been listening, you know that we are creating a podcast that comes out every Tuesday early in the morning thinking about education and the system of education and the different roles within that system, and each week we have somebody different coming in and talking about an upcoming time of the year from the perspective of a role. And so today we have Dr Stephanie Brenner here with us and she's talking with us from an instructional coach or a coaching leadership role. Hi, I'm Stephanie.
Speaker 2:Yo, I'm really glad to be here again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fun we had last month you were here and you were talking about coaches getting a hold of their calendar, like taking some time sitting down with their principles, talking about what do they envision coaching is going to look like and then making sure that the calendar highlights what they value and what that plan is that they made with their principles and then making sure that they were in classrooms and in classrooms a lot. I feel like that really resonated with a lot of people. Just based on the feedback that we've gotten, people are saying that they really want to make sure that they intentionally take that time to meet with their principles. They want to make sure that they highlight what they value in their calendars and that they're spending lots and lots of time in classrooms. So thank you so much for that.
Speaker 2:No problem, I'm happy to kind of talk about those kinds of things because it's very predictable that our calendars get overrun easily with the men of school things, that your day gets away you don't know where it went.
Speaker 1:That's for sure, as we're thinking about a few weeks into the school year, so thinking about September. If you start school in September, you'll be looking more at October around this time, just to give people an idea. So we've been in school a couple of weeks and coaches are going to be having gotten through that crazy time of getting people on all the systems and logins and all their materials, and today I want you to talk to us a little bit about what needs to be on their radar now that we've gotten through that hustle and bustle of the first couple of weeks of school. What are some tips that you would give to them that's going to help set them up for success?
Speaker 2:Okay, so around this time of the year, like you said, once you're at the beginning, couple of weeks of school have settled down and everyone's where they should be and people are starting to get into a routine. The typical thing that starts happening right now as a coach or an instructional leader is that you are bombarded with data.
Speaker 2:Like there's so much data is coming out of the woodwork, for your teachers have to do certain types of data in their classrooms, and now all of it's coming at you and it can be incredibly overwhelming because you just don't know what to do with all of it. And how does it fit into the big picture of your role and how you support your staff?
Speaker 2:So, I think that that is the big thing to be ready to have on our radar as a coach is be ready for all of the data. So today I want to spend some time talking about data and how can you use data in your classrooms and as a school from the instruction perspective.
Speaker 2:So the foundation. There are several different types of data that we can talk about or that we hear buzzwords in our in our schools. The first one would be formative data, and then informative data is really meant to like inform your immediate instruction, so it's something that occurs daily. It's meant to be used quickly for the purposes of responsive teaching, so examples might be exit tickets or a quiz or looking at student reading responses, homework. If they're like that, where are they? In a draft of the writing process and even in a double note?
Speaker 2:Those are all types of assessments and another type of assessment would be a summative assessment and summative is, like I think of it, at the end, so it's at the end of the year what the big assessment you give at the end of the year, or a big assessment you give at the end of a semester or quarter unit or grade period or whatever. Not as easy to use that type of data for reteaching or providing additional practice, because you're moving on to something going to a grade level, going on into a new unit of study or that kind of thing. So some of those might be like state tests are a summative assessment, or district common assessments might be a summative assessment.
Speaker 2:Now I could get on a tangent, because summative assessments can be used as formative assessments. It's an ideal situation, but that's an entirely different conversation than our purposes today. So we have formative assessment, summative assessment, and really at this time of the year, coaches can be really integrated with screening data. That's what I want to spend most of our time talking about today. Signing data typically occurs one to three times a school year and that depends on the type of assessment it is and even the grade level. Signing data is meant to be like a really quick snapshot of how students are performing in relation to a set of norms, and it helps us identify kids at risk of not meeting a skill required at the end of the year. It can also help us rank students in comparison to their peers so we can prioritize. Need like who do we want to be more than others? And some examples of signing data are you might hear a star, you might have heard of Dibbles or NWEA, fast, iredi, and in some spaces, the benchmark assessment system is used for screening data piece.
Speaker 1:I do want to pause right there for a second, though. I think you've said some things that are really important when it comes to thinking about that screening data when you talked about that. It's a snapshot. It identifies risk of students. Something to me was like it ranks students so you can prioritize need. So this is really important information that I don't think that people always take seriously. I think they use it as an opportunity to check off the list, and I do know that's a completely different podcast. That's something that you work with people on all the time, but I think it's important that people hear those points, and so I wanted to just kind of reiterate that really quickly.
Speaker 2:Thank you because they are really important parts our points that can be overlooked and sometimes screening data gets a bad puts a bad taste in people's lives. And it can be incredibly useful as a tool, which is why I think that for a coach, this time of the year, spending time thinking about screening data is really worth the investment of time Because of all the help you and your plan and what you do with your teachers and, ultimately, what happens, so it's a big tool to have.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Knowing that there are those three big pieces of data that we could think of formative, summative and screening data.
Speaker 2:I believe that emphasizing on screening data for right now is so important for two big purposes. The first big purpose is that it can help us identify students who potentially need additional support or intervention. That's one big purpose that a coach can look at the data for. The other big reason would be that it can help you, as a coach, identify trends across the building and within grade levels so that you can determine professional development needs of the teachers.
Speaker 2:So, making support for their students. When I talk about each of these two big things, I really want you to keep in mind I'm coming from the lens of professional development needs. Looking at data, knowing I need to use it to help identify students, in the back of my mind are always what are the professional development needs of my staff related to this data? And when I'm looking for trends, it's always in the mind what are the professional development needs of my teachers? That's my role. How do I help teachers with their instruction so that our students receive the best instruction possible? Okay, let's dig into some of the bigger things with those two big points. So if I think of screening data first, with the purpose of identifying students who need support or intervention, my biggest recommendation would be that you need to follow some kind of protocol. Having a system in place is really important for that. The logistics of establishing said protocol is a podcast in its own sense and a long one if we want
Speaker 2:to say that. So I don't want to get into nitty gritty things. I do want to give you some basics of what a protocol could look like and sound like. So it would include a protocol would include some type of criteria for knowing which kids we're going to focus on. So it might be cut off points. It might be that we need them. We're going to really look at kids who are below in four out of seven different type of data points. So just knowing criteria for identifying students. And we're going to complete some kind of diagnostics and once we know which kids, we have to spend time analyzing the diagnostics for specific strengths and needs. So then we can use a problem solving model to create a plan of action for individual students. So that could be placement, what intervention they're going to be in. It could be who's going to be the teacher, who's going to be the students in that intervention? It could even be they're just going to be progress monitors right now.
Speaker 2:Their decision to be a screener because it's a screener, it's over identifying a lot of students. It's meant to cast a big net. We could say that they don't need intervention right now or even progress monitors. So when we think of this, why we would look at screening data it's one of the purposes is to go through a protocol to figure out which kids need what support and what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Can I pause us for a moment and ask a clarifying question, just in case, as we think about so you're talking about we're going to follow a protocol week this screening data the first thing we want to do is make sure we have the criteria determined on the students that we're going to focus on, whether it's cutoffs or, like you mentioned, four out of seven of the subtests or something show up that they're struggling Meet diagnostics. Is that on every child, because you mentioned that next, or is that on the students that meet that criteria?
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you, that's a good clarifying question. So yes, it would be the students who meet that criteria. So we've said any kid who's below the 30th percentile on four out of seven assessments, then those are the kids that we're going to get some diagnostic assessment and analyze those diagnostics and decide if they need what. Their next plan of attack is what their next instructional issues are, Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you Because I do think people give a screener and a diagnostic to every single child and that to me seems like a lot. I mean, screening is already a lot or diagnostics a lot, but if you tried to do both for all kids? I just wanted to double check on that. Thank you for clarifying.
Speaker 2:A point I want to make is that screening assessments should not by design, they should not take an overwhelming amount of time to administer to each student. Where diagnostic assessments are very, very time intensive because they're trying to get really specific information where screening data is not meant to, or give very specific information in most places.
Speaker 1:Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2:So after we think of we're going to follow a protocol for identifying students who need support or intervention. The next thing would be to look at this data for instructional guidance and I can look at what whole group needs in mind or small group needs in mind. So once by this time kids are in classroom rooms and grades and we know what it looks like. But I can think of this big picture. Like I know this grade level really needs a lot of additional instruction on whatever skill based off of our screening data. And that really leads into the next, that second big point, which is I have to look at this data for trends across the building and within grade levels to determine building of PD needs.
Speaker 2:The first way of analyzing that data is to think about the building view. I know as a coach it was really easy to get really nitty gritty into a particular classroom or a particular student. You can go down a rabbit hole with one because it's kind of fun. However, as the coach, you're helping the whole school and having that broad perspective of the building first and then working your way down into some nitty gritty things.
Speaker 2:So that's why I wanted to really be specific about building level first, and one of the first ways I really think of using that data at a building level would be identifying where are their pockets of high number of students who are flagged. When we do that, then we're able to provide or decide does that team need more resources? And the resources don't have to be just materials. The resources can be people and time. So, thinking of team, do they need support and resources in those ways? Another way, another thing to think about there is what do they need as far as potential professional development that's going to help them support the students that they have? And that planning also includes what is that PD going to be? When is that PD going to happen?
Speaker 2:But this connects to that whole year PD plan that you outlined with your administrator ahead of time. So you need to utilize what you already established and use your current screening data to support that or change it. So some examples I could give, like how do you determine some PD? Here would be if a grade level had low comprehension scores, then I might decide that this team needs professional development and vocabulary instruction and professional development on how do they incorporate that into lots of places in their day. Another example might be I know that the students in first grade had low accuracy rates on their sentence reading or their CBM assessment, so that team might need professional development on how to blend sound. Teach kids how to blend sounds. They might need some professional development on phonological awareness.
Speaker 2:So I can give that ahead of time. Be ready for it early. One final thing that we can decide when we look at building data is if we need more information about what daily instruction looks like in a particular grade level.
Speaker 2:For example, if your third grade team has a high number of students lagged for being below, then we can make the decision of I need to know are all parts of the curriculum being taught or is significant amount of time being devoted to small group work and whole group work? Are all parts getting the amount of time that they're supposed to be getting and kids get enough time practicing?
Speaker 2:So as an instructional coach, I can make that decision of. Do I just need more information about this particular grade level before I make more decisions on what PD should look like and what are other types of instructional implications for that grade level in those students?
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:The next kind of big thing that, when you're looking at building data, would be to be aware of cohort trends, and at the beginning of the year it's really nice to think about. How did students perform at the end of the previous school year compared to how they're performing now? Of course, the expectations have changed.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I still get an idea though of did our kids maintain the amount of learning that they had at the end of the year, and this gives us an insight into curriculum strengths and curriculum needs. Again, let's go back to third grade. Third grade left second grade with a high number of students performing well, and into third grade, and there's a low number of students like there's not. There's a huge discrepancy between the number of kids who are for profession. It makes me think what did instruction in second grade look like? The learning wasn't sticky enough that they maintained that summer.
Speaker 2:So that's a really interesting way to think of the screening data. We always talk about what are some predictable problems and when it gets too thinking about screening data, you can, at a building level, really start to think about what are those predictable areas of concern and analyze them. The best way I can explain this are a couple of examples. So, for example, you might know that first graders tend to struggle at the beginning of the year, perform poorly on nonsense, word fluency, the importance of that screening and what that really the long-term implications that that still has on students. So last year you may have targeted professional development on phonological awareness skills and blending skills in kindergarten. Now in first grade I can look at this beginning of the year screening data and think of did that focus transfer into student performance?
Speaker 2:The students were enough that they were performing well in kindergarten and now in first grade they held on to that learning well enough that it is an area of strength now, or it's there. It's grown. So I can make the decision. Should I continue on with that PD? Do I need to include first grade in on that PD because it there was good momentum going, so I want to make sure the first grade teachers have that going so the students can maintain that skill.
Speaker 2:Should I layer in some other type of professional learning for my teachers, or do we just need to go to a different area of focus for the teachers? So that would be one example of thinking of those predictable problems. And then another example would be I know that because we spent time doing this that in order for kids to perform well on our state assessment, I know that they have to be two grade levels above on the start assessment and maybe that's the screening tool that we use. At this point. I would be wondering what is the current reality of this group of kids now? And I maybe last year focused PD on a progression of skills that allows students to utilize comprehension strategies that are high leverage standards.
Speaker 2:How did that go so? If I focused on that in third grade, how well? How are those students now performing in fourth grade? Should I move on to a different area of focus? Do I need to layer something on? Do I need to continue that PD in the fourth grade, making those type of decisions about professional development needs for teachers and again, like I could get really really nitty gritty. It's a lot of fun for me to analyze data for instructional implications.
Speaker 2:Right answered about that, but that is definitely a whole more conversation than what this podcast is meant to be, so I'm gonna purposely stop myself there.
Speaker 1:They could give right, there can I well, and I think you made a a couple of things I want to just kind of highlight as you know we're listening as I was listening is you do need to look at your screening data and, you know, do some sort of correlation over time to see how it aligns with your state data.
Speaker 1:Because I promise you have sat through hundreds of these vendor presentations and they promise every time that it'll tell you it's going to be a predictor, but really you have to look at your data and the students and compare it to your state scores and how they did there and create your own correlation chart, because everyone wants to sell us something. So I just want to caution you that look at, look at a court, create a correlation, see what you're noticing and see what you're noticing over time and then, as you're getting the screening data, hopefully by now you you know that, like if you need to score two grade levels above or if your screening screener is harder and so you find that kids who are in proficient are really advanced on your high-stakes tests, like that's awesome, but it's worth it investment right, you can also.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes this screening data that we give is very elaborate and it can include a lot of information, depending on which tool you're using for your screening data assessments. You might even identify one measure that is the highest predictor of how students are informed, and so it's not just a comprehensive overall type of tool. It could be.
Speaker 2:Oh, if you only look at this one thing, this gives us the highest predictor, and you can see that one for that purpose, if you need it right right so, after we think about looking at our screening data, at what the building perspective at mind, then moving on to the grade level would be the next type of way of analysis, and the same kinds of things that you would do at a building level are the things you would do at a grade level. The cool thing about the grade level analysis is you're able to drill in a little bit and get more specific about certain components of a screener versus overall data type of things. So I what I think about are I can now look at individual classroom performance and are there, is there a group of students within a grade level that has a higher number of students flat? So I can think of how do I provide support to that teacher? Am I?
Speaker 2:doing this in time, planning to hear what instruction with that teacher. Does that teacher going to need additional modeling or coaching support because she has so many students who flat Right she already? I also can think about what are overall instructional recommendations that I could give for whole group instruction or small group instruction. That goes to lots of parts of the day on classroom performance, so I could go to teacher.
Speaker 2:You need to focus on phonological awareness, you need to focus on phonics, you need to work us on sight words or you need to focus on vocabulary.
Speaker 2:Whatever it is based on that classroom level data. Another thing would be it think of trends that you have picked up on as a coach across the years that indicate instructional strengths or instructional needs of particular teachers. The sample was not the strongest math teacher because it wasn't my thing. So when I had students who had a high level of need in math instruction, I relied on other my peers to give me tips on what's that going to look like for my math, but I could help them with ELA type of help. So, as a coach, think being cognizant of that. If you know a particular teacher struggles providing vocabulary instruction but the data shows that their students are going to need a high level of support and vocabulary, what kind of support can I give that teacher?
Speaker 2:in their coaching cycle to help them meet the needs of their kids. And finally, I think of what are the predictable areas of concern that are high predictors for future student performance. So can I, and at the grade level, make decisions about front loading PD? So I think of maybe let's go back to third grade. If I know that the students in third grade performed they didn't do well on the word analysis assessment I can think of okay at their next PLC. I'm going to talk about this measure and this is what it means. This is what you can do with instruction to help students ahead of time. And some of those high leverage ones might be vocabulary I already said that Fact fluency or any type of fluency.
Speaker 2:A word analysis, if they had some. The accuracy rates of students is another type of big predictor and the younger kids phoning segmentation. So I can look at those high predictor assessments and front load PD for teachers based on what I know their grade level is going to be. Again, I could get really windy about that stuff because it's kind of a passion of mine to analyze data, especially screening data, to notice where are those strengths and weaknesses of our students and, over time, what are trends that help me as a coach, beside the PD needs of our teachers for instructional purposes.
Speaker 1:May I ask a quick question? Whoa, okay, no, don't ask. I was just wondering. If you're a coach and you're hearing all of these subtests and really we hear a lot of people looking solely at the composite score how in the world am I supposed to know, or where can I go to understand, why it's important that we're taking this particular subtest and what it means? If I see students are struggling, where would you recommend they look?
Speaker 2:One of the best places to look would be in the manual that comes with the assessment tool that you're using. Often it will have the white matter or the explanation of the different assessor components and it will outlie which data points are the most high leverage at certain points. It will give the research behind that testing measure and what it means, what it's really assessing. But it's in that manual that we most of the time just kind of tap on the assessment.
Speaker 2:Like when you have to go through the training for the assessment. We kind of ignore all of that. That would be a place that I recommend people go first to the user's manual to see where those assessments are really measuring. If they don't know.
Speaker 1:Great, that's super helpful. I think we get so hung up on we have to give this that we just worry about the actual administering of the assessment that we don't think about, like the purpose and the data that we're getting and what that means. We just then look at that overall end score and think everything's fine. And it's a lot of times in our experience is we'll notice students are having problems in third, fourth, fifth grade and when we sit down with people and look at their data it's like actually you could see that trend was happening in kindergarten.
Speaker 2:Based on this subtester that Now there were little crumbs all the way back.
Speaker 1:The whole time and people skip that and it's like we could have filled it in back here when it was like a little thing, and now we've got kind of a big thing, and so that's why I really wanted us to take just a moment to let people know Don't ignore it. It's important. Those subtests are important.
Speaker 2:Really is? It definitely is, and that's why you can get really nerdy about it.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, because you see the power. We've seen the power of it. Let's think about now, this time of year. What are the predictable problems that they're likely going to run into?
Speaker 2:One of those predictable problems relates to what you just said, and that is or the question you just asked. So how can I, as a coach, help teachers and administrators make sense of the data? Do the teachers and administrators really know what each part of the data is assessing, why is it important, what are the long term implications of it and how to use that data for instructional purposes? So that's definitely a predictable problem. Another predictable problem that is so easy for a coach to get lost in is that we do not spend enough time analyzing the screening data for instruction and professional development needs. We're spending a lot of time taking that data from one form, putting it into another form, compiling all the data or gathering it for reporting purposes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Instead of sitting down and getting deep into the data and thinking about the power it has for instruction and professional development. Another thing that I highly suggest is something you be aware of and try to plan for ahead of time, and I think that this is a very predictable problem. We tend to only look at screening data as what we're doing wrong. What are what are our students not doing well on? How am I gonna fix it, instead of spending time to find the areas where there are strengths, finding places where there are improvements that haven't occurred, so that we can celebrate that with teachers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Teachers need to know that the fruits of their labor are being seen. So our third grade team has spent a ton of time focusing on vocabulary and their fourth grade data this year shows an increase in vocabulary. You should be shouting off the mountain saying third grade, all that work you did on vocabulary last year is really setting up the fourth grade team and those students success. They need to have that in their hearts to keep them going. It's teaching is not easy.
Speaker 1:No, no, and it does feel like you get beat down. We let the data beat us down and we forget the importance and the value of celebrating those successes, because there are many.
Speaker 2:There are often many successes, and can we think about those successes at the building level, at the grade level? But students Right. Celebrating that improvement with students as well, helping them see they have made all of this growth in progress because they're working their tails off too.
Speaker 1:They are for sure. Well, as we start to wrap up our time, what would be a tip or reminder you want to share with the coaches right now?
Speaker 2:When you're having conversations about screening data or any type of data it the tip would be to keep the conversations focused on student performance.
Speaker 2:What are the kids doing, what are they not doing? And because data conversations can easily become judgmental on the teacher what are you not doing right? What's not going well in your classroom? And when we focus on what students are actually doing, what students are not doing, that it becomes naturally more about what is working for the kid and what's not working for the student. That opens up the willingness to try something different. I've done something. I, the teacher, have done something wrong.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I'm not doing something good enough.
Speaker 1:It's right.
Speaker 2:Right now isn't working for this child. Let's see if this change works. So that's my big tip when we talk about any type of data, but particularly screening data, is just keep it about the student.
Speaker 1:Thank you, stephanie, for sharing all of this today. I know that it's going to be so helpful for the coaches and the important work that they're doing to support their teachers. And, if you didn't know, last year Dr Brenner recorded a podcast it's episode 11 that we have and it's called Got Data Steps to Analyzing and Planning Reading Interventions for our youngest readers. It was a really popular episode and it pairs really nicely with the information that you got today. So check that out because I think you'll find it to be super valuable. And if you did not know, compass PD has a big goal of impacting the learning of 1 million students and you can help us. Please share this podcast with a fellow educator and help us impact the learning of educators and students all over. We wish you the very best day.