Course Highlight: Data-Driven Decision Making: Implementing Strategies for Student Achievement, by Lee Jenkins*

Learn how to make data-driven decisions using classroom data to inform your instructional practice, resulting in higher student academic achievement. Do you strive to reach a bell curve by the end of a term? While this may be common practice, the bell curve actually represents teachers' failure to teach and students' failure to learn. By capturing and analyzing student data in the form of graphs, charts, and diagrams, you will learn to adapt and focus instructional strategies to facilitate greater student success in less time. Jenkins presents lively graphic examples in a workshop setting, modeling the processes of charting and reading data. Use the LtoJ system, which conceptualizes what student progress should look like over the school year, with the L representing high expectations at the beginning of the year and the J indicating that those expectations were met.

Learn how to:

• Develop an implementation plan for the LtoJ system
• Collect and analyze student data
• Use data to test theories
• Modify instruction based on analysis of student data using the following tools:
• Pareto charts
• Scatter diagrams
• Histograms
• Correlation charts
• Radar charts
• Class and student run chart
• Item analysis

What will you earn?

• Professional Development credits applicable to teacher state license renewal in the form of:
• Continuing Education Units
• State specific approved credit types (i.e. Act 48 Hours, CEUs, Clock Hours, CPDUs, PD Hours, PDPs, PGPs, PLUs, SB-CEUs, Renewal Credits, & USOEs)

Acquire the professional development/continuing education units needed to meet your state-license renewal requirement today! This is an online course, accessible 24/7 from anywhere that has an internet connection. Course format is self-paced with a video-based mode of instruction. Additional details on how to find this course in your state can be found below.

Course Video Preview How can data improve your practice? View clips of Lee Jenkins' new course where you will learn about the LtoJ system of analyzing data in order to make important decisions about your classroom instruction.

Professional Development Choose your state below to register for Jenkins' course. AK | AL | AR | AZ | CA | CO | CT | DC | DE | FL | GA | HI | IA | ID | IL | IN | KS | KY | LA | MA | MD | ME | MI | MN | MO | MS | MT | NC | ND | NE | NH | NJ | NM | NV | NY | OH | OK | OR | PA | PR | RI | SC | SD | TN | TX | UT | VA | VT | WA | WI | WV | WY

How can we sustain school improvement? Data-driven decision making is one of the keys to ensure this by pulling relevant data to help guide improvements in teacher practices. McRel discusses how to use this data to "pinpoint areas in need of improvement" by ensuring that data is collected, managed, and analyzed to create new strategies and policies based on emerging data patterns.

Teacher Talk: We want to hear straight from YOU! Are you using data to analyze your practice? Email us at teachertalk@kdsi.org to tell us how you use data and, if not, what is stopping you from using it. LAST WEEK: One teacher mentioned that her conversations would be more effective if "examples of actual issues in my classroom were addressed instead of speaking in generalizations." Read last week's newsletter for more info on strategic conversations.

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