Читать книгу The Data Coach's Guide to Improving Learning for All Students - Katherine E. Stiles - Страница 18

A school culture characterized by collective responsibility for student learning, commitment to equity, and trust is the foundation for collaborative inquiry. In the absence of such a culture, schools may be unable to respond effectively to the data they have.

This assumption is based on a dual meaning of the word responsibility. As in our first assumption, responsibility implies the moral imperative. But it also holds another meaning, which is, quite literally, the ability to respond: “response-ability” (Wellman & Lipton, 2004). Long before state tests, plenty of data were available to let us know some students were not learning—students slumping down in their seats; going through day after day of school without being engaged; having poor grades, poor attendance and high dropout rates. However, in the absence of a collaborative culture where everyone takes responsibility and is committed to improving student learning, educators literally could not respond to the data. Schools that have “response-ability” do not leave student learning to chance. As Rick DuFour and his colleagues (2004) describe it, “They create a schoolwide system of interventions that provides all students with additional time and support when they experience initial difficulty in their learning” (p. 7). Collaborative schools are organized in grade-level or course- or subject-based teams where this response-ability is enacted as part of the daily work of teachers.

A hallmark of such a high-performing culture is a commitment to equity. Singleton and Linton (2006) define educational equity as “raising the achievement of all students while narrowing the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students and eliminating the racial predictability and disproportionality of which student groups occupy the highest and lowest achievement categories” (p. 46). Equity does not mean that all students receive an equal level of resources and support, but that those of the greatest need receive the level of support they need to succeed.

A collaborative community committed to equity requires a high level of trust. In high-functioning cultures, educators trust each other enough to discuss “undiscussables” such as race, reveal their own practice and mistakes, root for one another, and face together the brutal facts that data often reveal (Barth, 2006). For all of these reasons, districts that make the most of their investment into data management systems place an equal or greater priority in strengthening school cultures and the ability to respond to the data.