The use of data to drive decisions and instruction in Chesterfield County public schools

Abstract

Since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, states and public school districts have been held to increasingly higher accountability standards. This has led to more high-stakes assessments for students, and more focused attention on the achievement results data from those assessments. While the pressure to produce successful student outcomes continues to rise, two other factors have affected school districts’ ability to deliver. On the financial front, the past few years have seen greater budget constraints for public schools caused by the struggling American economy. Meanwhile, the rapidly increasing racial and ethnic diversification of the United States is outpacing school districts’ ability to adapt. Chesterfield County Public Schools, a large, suburban district in central Virginia, is experiencing each of these dynamics: increased accountability, a changing student population, and financial challenges. Although Chesterfield has traditionally been a high-performing school district, its overall student performance has declined in recent years. In an effort to sustain excellence, Chesterfield has increased its curriculum offerings and supports while maximizing its operational efficiency. However, those efforts have not turned the tide of declining test scores, particularly for its growing population of children of color. Education research has indicated that student achievement rises when teachers collaborate and use student data to plan and inform their instructional practice. The central question of this capstone is, how can student achievement data be used more effectively by teachers and administrators to drive instructional decision making in Chesterfield County’s schools? Chesterfield adopted the professional learning communities (PLC) model several years before the start of this project in 2013. However, the level of implementation of PLCs has been sporadic throughout the district. This capstone reviews the research on data use in education and the effectiveness of PLCs. It presents findings from the current state of data use in several schools based on interviews, focus groups, and observations, followed by an analysis of how Chesterfield can improve its data use for driving instruction. The capstone concludes with the study’s implications for myself, for Chesterfield, and for the education sector.