Toledo Teachers Use Structured Analysis of Student Data to Turn Around Their School

Ida Lieszkovszky / StateImpact: Ohio

Alesia Smith is principal at Rothenberg Preparatory Academy, a Cincinnati elementary school where teachers have used regular, structured reviews of student data to improve students' academic performance. She is standing in the school's "data room."

The Toledo Blade’s Nolan Rosenkrans has another installment last week in a series on how the district is trying to turn around Robinson Elementary, its lowest performing school, with the help of several million dollars of federal funds.

Based on last year’s performance, Robinson had the lowest performance index of any school in the Toledo school distric and received the equivalent of an “F” on its state report card.

The Blade reports that one of the tactics the school is using is having teachers meet formally to review student data:

One of many new strategies the district is using this year is a team-based approach for teachers to view and use student test data. Teachers hold these discussions informally every day. But this new, formalized program — the district is calling them Teacher Based Teams — will be a core component of attempts to boost test scores at schools such as Robinson.

The meetings are highly structured, with designated team leaders, time keepers, and secretaries. The teachers pore over student data, diagnose weak spots and successes, and develop strategies for the coming weeks’ lessons. The data for the discussions must be documented. Everything, under the federal School Improvement Grant that Robinson received, must be documented.

Sound familiar? The Blade says that teachers in Lima used a similar approach successfully. And when we went to Cincinnati in August to find out why Cincinnati was again Ohio’s highest rated urban school district, teachers and administrators said regular reviews of student performance data was one of the reasons.