Our discussion showed the need to disaggregate all of the data we use in school improvement.  The data that Maryland collects on mobility includes students who move district due to moving house, but also students who are withdrawn from school by parent choice, or on account of disciplinary proceedings.

It is easy to gather data from the state on the typical sub-groups, and from this it became clear that special ed students and African American students were also some most affected by mobility.  This correlates directly with assessment scores, and certainly suggests that if our schools could focus on these subgroups with regard to mobility it may help us to decrease the achievement gap here.

Further data would clearly be a benefit here.  Attendance teams do great work identifying at risk students, but we need to collect a database of information showing the reasons for student mobility so that we can correlate these reasons with student performance.  Without this data it is hard to know where to focus our limited resources in preventative care.

Our discussion also highlighted the problems that a high mobility rate can cause for any school reform program.  Any effort at articulation and vertical teaming between, or even, within schools needs to take note of the mobile population.  In the community we were looking at the mobility of the population could even make comparisons of assessment data between different years problematic, or even invalid.  This is a big issue.

From my own perceptions in my classroom I know that the school  I work at has a transitory population, and particularly in lower ability classes.  These pupils tend to be students who are living in rental accomodation and who, as leases run out, or as evictions happen, move into other school districts.  I also regularly receive students returning from long-term suspensions.  Unsurprisingly these students often struggle in classes.

I wonder what I can do as an instructor in these situations.  I know I need to make sure that my instruction includes regular review to help any new student engage with the curriculum.

I also feel that, as a community, this issue needs to be a priority.  How can we help families to stay in the community for the decades it needs to raise a child?  If we don’t make this a priority, how can we expect anyone else to care about the communities we work and live in?

What are your experiences of the impact of student mobility on instruction?

Image by : Shockmotion @flickr

Knowledge

From my grade book, from the scantron, from the state assessments, from my administration, from my bills, and from the news… why else would I read the Economist every evening?

This semester I am co-teaching a class called Data-Driven Decision-Making, and it’s really making me think again.

Last week I read an article by Michael Fullan (The Role of Leadership in
the Promotion of Knowledge Management in Schools, presented at the OECD conference in 2002).  He identifies the difference between Information and Knowledge:

Information is machines. Knowledge is people. Information becomes  knowledge only when it takes on a “social life”

Do you ever feel oppressed by data?  We receive volumes of it, but  if it never embeds itself in community it is merely noise… just information.

Collaboration has been a buzzword in education for eternity, but we still work primarily in our own spaces.  The edublogosphere is still the high of collaboration for me.  In my school the only real collaboration I experience is on a leadership team, or with my teacher intern.

So, my challenge is to turn the information I receive this week into knowledge.

I commit to engaging my colleagues in conversation about the instructional and operational data I receive.  I also promise not to pass on data without establishing a “social life” for it.

Data for data’s sake is merely information… it lacks meaning.

Image from: flickr.com/stanleymoss