How can school personnel use data to make instructional decisions?
Page 2: Collecting and Evaluating Data
Collecting and evaluating data is extremely important when working with students of all ability levels, but it becomes especially critical when working with students who demonstrate learning challenges. Unfortunately, many educators struggle to understand what data to collect and how to interpret the data they do collect. There are three steps in the DBI process when teachers are expected to collect and evaluate data to make informed instructional decisions.
- Step 1: Validated Intervention Program*
- Step 2: Progress Monitor—The teacher collects formative assessment data to determine how a student is responding to the validated intervention program.
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formative assessment
A system of providing continual feedback about students’ preconceptions and performances to both learners and instructors; an ongoing evaluation of student learning.
- Step 3: Diagnostic Academic Assessment—The teacher collects assessment data to determine why the student is not responding adequately to the validated intervention program.
- Step 4: Intervention Adaptation*
- Step 5: Progress Monitor— The teacher collects formative assessment data to determine how a student is responding to the adapted intervention.
This graphic illustrates both the steps of data-based individualization, as well as they ways in which those steps interact. Step 1, “Validated Intervention Program,” is represented by an orange rectangle. This box connects via a vertical grey line to Step 2, “Progress Monitoring,” which is illustrated as a green oval. Both steps, in turn, are connected to a horizontal line with labeled circles at each of its ends. The circle on the left, “Nonresponsive,” has a red minus sign at its center, while the circle on the right, “Responsive,” has a red plus sign. A grey arrow connected to the “Nonresponsive” circle points toward Step 3 of the DBI process, “Diagnostic Academic Assessment/Functional Assessment,” which is represented as a green oval, similar to Step 2. The “Responsive” circle also has a grey arrow, this one pointing back up toward Step 2, “Progress Monitoring.”
Step 3 is connected via a vertical grey arrow to Step 4, “Intervention Adaptation,” represented as an orange rectangle. Another grey arrow connects Step 4 to Step 5, “Progress Monitoring,” another green oval. As above, these latter steps are connected to a horizontal line with labeled circles at each of its ends. The circle on the left, “Nonresponsive,” has a red minus sign at its center, while the circle on the right, “Responsive,” has a red plus sign. A large grey arrow connected to the “Nonresponsive” circle points back to Step 3, “Diagnostic Academic Assessment/Functional Assessment,” while the “Responsive” circle directs instructors back to Step 5, “Progress Monitoring.”
This module page focuses on Steps 2, 3, and 5, so those green ovals are highlighted whereas the rest of the graphic is slightly faded out.
Within the DBI process, teachers collect primarily two types of data: progress monitoring and diagnostic assessment.
| DBI Process | |
|---|---|
| Type of Data | Purpose |
| Progress Monitoring |
|
| Diagnostic Assessment |
|
Rebecca Zumeta Edmonds discusses the different uses of progress monitoring data and diagnostic assessment data. Next, Sarah Arden discusses the importance of making data-based instructional decisions.
Rebecca Zumeta Edmonds, PhD
Principal Researcher
American Institutes for Research
(time: 0:58)
Sarah Arden, PhD
Technical Assistance Team
National Center on Intensive Intervention
(time: 0:56)
Transcript: Rebecca Zumeta, PhD
We very frequently see schools using diagnostic data for progress monitoring purposes and progress monitoring data for diagnostic purposes. And they really are intended to help you do two different things. Progress monitoring data can be graphed and allow us to track growth over time, tell us if the student is making progress toward desired outcomes. If the student’s not making progress, the progress monitoring tool by itself won’t necessarily tell us why. What we need to do, once we see a lack of progress, is to then delve deeper and figure out the skills that the student seems to be struggling most with, and that’s where the diagnostic piece comes in. On the flip side diagnostic data cannot necessarily be graphed and tracked in a way that we know to be indicative of later performance. So really it should be progress monitoring data first and then, when we see a lack of progress evident, a deeper dive to get more diagnostic and understand why the challenges may be occurring.
Transcript: Sarah Arden, PhD
Data-based instructional decisions are so important for all students but especially for our students who have a history of academic failure or struggling to make progress. We need to make decisions about their instruction based on the data that they are giving us. We have to meet these students where they are, provide instruction, and then help them make progress based exactly on where they are. We know that students who have persistent and severe academic needs need about ten to 30 more times practice. That’s a research-based fact that we know, and we also know that that practice needs to be at their instructional level. So those instructional levels, that practice, those skills, they need to be exactly where they are and that instruction needs to be based on the data that they provide us given the instruction, given the progress monitoring, and given the data collection that we do.
Who Implements DBI?
Depending on a school’s available resources, a variety of qualified individuals (e.g., intervention provider, special education teacher) can implement DBI. Regardless of who provides the intervention and collects the progress monitoring and diagnostic assessment data, however, a team of school professionals should be involved in making instructional decisions for individual students based on their data. These decisions should not be made by a single individual.
