The Wrong Ways to Use Data

Hey There Friends!

How’s it going?

Hopefully, you’re transitioning easily back into the semester. Our students are finally settling back into their routines. And so are we. But, with every new year, we are always eager to jump into some new habits or routines that will better serve us (and our students). One of the biggest habits we’ve adopted over the years is to run a truly data-driven practice.

What does this mean?

Running a data-driven practice means that the data drives our decisions.

Every decision. Especially decisions that impact our students.

When we are trying to determine which areas we should focus on with our students we are using our data to provide a guide, a roadmap.

But one of the biggest mistakes we see (we know because we’ve been there) is that we use data the wrong way, we aren’t using data to drive decisions because ….

1 - We’re making it personal. We’re making the data mean something about us.

We’ve been trained to do this. We’ve been given performance reviews based on what this data says. We’ve received praise and recognition for student growth and the opposite for lack of student growth.

This connection between student growth and our own self-worth is DANGEROUS.

The data doesn’t mean anything about us. It means that either our instruction for this specific student or group of students in front of us, right now, is working or it needs adjustment. That’s it!

Because here’s the deal, sometimes you have INCREDIBLE instructional techniques, and for whatever reason (and there can be TONS of reasons), they’re not landing. This does not mean that YOU aren’t a good educator. This doesn’t even necessarily mean that your curriculum or program doesn’t work. It just means that the approach isn’t working in this specific situation. And that’s okay - as long as we use the data we have to tweak the instruction.

Because here’s the problem and the reason we say this is dangerous -

When you make your data personal - you are clouding your judgment. You may miss what the data is telling you because you become defensive about your role in the data. When we become defensive around our data, it often leads us to stop tracking the data because we’re afraid of what that data will tell us or how we will feel if our students don’t make the progress we’d hoped for. Or it leads to burnout because every time we take data we’re measuring ourselves. And we can’t have incredible educators like you burnt out, it’s just not acceptable. So here’s the thing -

We must ALWAYS be tracking data!!! We can’t let emotions get in the way.

The easiest way to do this is to remove ALL connections between the data and what it means about you as the incredible professional you are.

AND we aren’t using data to effectively drive decisions because

2 - We’re only using the data to look at PAST results.

Unfortunately, we make the mistake of using data only to determine if we hit goals or not. So we put together an amazing treatment plan with goals and then we set a date in which we will look back at the data and at that point, we will determine whether or not we met our goals and that’s the end of that.

And this way of analyzing data has been ingrained in so many areas of our life. I see it in business too. We track our finances meticulously using accounting software and then can often fall victim to the same mistake!!! We only look at our numbers to see if we hit our goals, if we stayed on budget, and so on and so forth. Because there are SO FEW people training anyone on how to look at that data to make decisions for the future. But that’s the BEST way to use all the data. How do we use these numbers to make informed decisions in our lives?!?

It’s the same with our students! We need to use data to make decisions about the FUTURE.

We need to transition from the

Old Belief -

I use data to determine whether I’m good at my job and to see whether or not my students hit their goals.

to the

New Belief -

I use data to see if this specific plan is working for these specific students and to plan for my students’ upcoming session targets. My data is not a reflection of my worth or efficacy as an educator.

You must remind yourself of this over and over. Data is here as a tool to help guide us, to help us understand where to target our intervention, which lesson activities to pull more of, and which to pull less of. Nothing else. And the fact that it has been used for other purposes, such as performance reviews is ineffective and counterproductive. Data can allow us to look at patterns so we can grow, so we can improve, and so we can adapt. Let’s commit to using it for that - and only for that.

Can we get your commitment?

And one last thing -

If you are feeling overwhelmed or if you aren’t sure where to start (first, lean into the overwhelm, it means you’re getting ready to grow and expand)…

And then >>click here<< to check out the first blog in our data tracking series - How to Determine Which Data Needs to be Tracked and grab our FREE data tracking system below so that you have the ACTUAL system you need to track data efficiently and effectively - just remember this data is meant to guide your future lessons (not to mean anything about you).

Then, if you are ready to jump even further into the best practices for supporting your students, check out our FREE workshop, How to Create SOR-Aligned Goals & Track Data. In this free workshop, you will learn how to use the data you already have to set appropriate goals, uncover the key to setting up your lessons to make data tracking easy and learn how to manage & organize your data. Plus, you’ll get a free data-tracking template!

Remember - just collecting data doesn’t get us to the finish line!!!