Gates Foundation Report

This post draws heavily from a report issued by the Gates Foundation last month.  That report is a distillation of 10 proposals submitted by some very high-flying names in the consulting industry – McKinsey and BCG among them – that the Gates Foundation hired to analyze 10 different school districts (sites) across the nation and suggest methods for improvement.

Not surprisingly, a heavy component of what these firms do, and what they suggested the school districts do, is to crunch numbers.  Schools are ready-made for number crunching, because they generate so much easily quantifiable data – grades, attendance records, standardized test scores, it’s a quant’s dream – but they don’t do anything with it most of the time.  Some excerpts from the report:

“Our site had never used data for anything other than compliance purposes prior to this teacher effectiveness planning process. Suffice to say, the way in which we’ve used data to understand our site over the last few months has fundamentally changed how we operate as an organization.”

“Data without analysis are nothing more than a collection of numbers.”

• “One site cited its limited strategic use of data as both an advantage and disadvantage. On the one hand, the site has a clean slate to build a new mindset around data and their use. On the other, the challenge to transform the site’s historically compliance driven data culture requires a significant departure from past practices and remains the focus of an intense change process.
• “Another site noted the advantage of having a “culture of data orientation that pervades all levels of our site and our schools.” While it took a long time to achieve this culture, the site then had a huge head start in pursuing more sophisticated uses of data to improve teacher effectiveness.
• “One site is investing in systems improvements to access new types of human resources data that will enhance its pre-existing value-added measures.
• “One site’s teachers not only receive regular student data reports, but they also are trained in how to use such data to make adjustments to instructional strategies.
• “One site credited the formal and informal use of data in conversations with principals and school leaders for its success in defining and evaluating accountability targets linked to school performance bonuses.

Data is a terrible thing to waste, and that’s a big chunk of what the report is all about.  In particular, I like this quote:

“Clearly, the ability to link student and teacher data is a necessary prerequisite—if not the linchpin—to define and measure teacher effectiveness.”

That’s the ultimate goal of the data analysis – identify which inputs produce measurable changes in your outputs (and in the right direction!), then figure out which ones do it for the least money, then do as many as you can with your limited budget.  Go figure, eh?