What to Know About Data and Progress Monitoring (when it comes to campus goals)

0:02 Welcome to the Catching up with Casey's show. If you are tired of chasing buy in, frustrated with teams who can't seem to get on the same page, or over the constant struggle of holding people accountable without micromanaging, this is the show for you. I'm Casey Watts, speaker, author and the creator of the Clarity Cycle Framework. I help leaders just like you take teams from frustration to alignment, so teams can work collectively toward a common purpose in a committed way instead of against each other as though they are functioning in different organizations. And we do it all through the craft of clarity. Whether you lead from the middle or you were the front facing leader of your organization.

0:45 On this show, we bring clarity to the seemingly small things in leadership that make the biggest difference because clarity precedes capacity. Now, with all of that said, let's dive into today's episode. Hey everybody, Oh my gosh. This is going to be a short episode, but a good one. I'm really excited about this episode, which is kind of surprising. I have not. Today is all about data or data however you say it, in progress monitoring, but probably not in the way that you might be thinking. So we are in our last episode of leading instructional change that actually sticks because we know that change is hard. And today we are gaining clarity about data in progress monitoring.

1:46 But you know, I, I do love some good data and I do love when we get together to analyze data. But honestly, I don't necessarily nerd out on the data itself or the analyzation of it. I nerd out hard on the conversations that happen and how to facilitate those conversations during data meetings or MTSS meetings, whatever it is that you're meet, that you're meeting, you're, you're talking about data no matter what in one way or another. So today we're specifically tracking how we can lead instructional change while it's happening so that momentum of the change doesn't fizzle out the second people get back to their classrooms. Before we dive in, I have to make sure that you were registered for the Ownership Shift webinar. It is happening this week, Thursday, March 26th. If you're central time, that's 11:00 AM. If it's if you're in Eastern Time, it's 12:00 PM. If you're tired of being the leader who carries the entire weight of campus change, and if you're tired of that massive 34 page document that's collecting dust while you recycle the same school goals or campus goals year after year, this is the webinar for you.

3:18 We are going to walk through the 1st 2 steps of the Clarity Cycle Framework so you can start to pass the baton to your staff and hold them accountable without micromanaging. If you can't make it live, don't worry, register anyway. You'll get the replay. It will be available for seven days so you can go to. I have the link in the show notes, but it is catching up with kc.com slash ownership. Now let's talk about data. Usually when I say that word to a leadership team, they immediately think of standardized assessment scores or maybe benchmarks or grades.

4:04 And there is definitely a place for that. But there there is also sometimes a problem with that because most of that data is post mortem. Most of that data is post mortem, meaning an analysis of the data is held afterwards to figure out why it was a success or failure. Right. So post mortem is a medical term. It's the analysis of an event, meaning usually death in the in the medical world to figure out what happened, why it happened, and it's afterwards. And if you are waiting for those high stakes test scores, I know you guys are in testing season right now. So you are prepping, prepping, prepping and getting students and teachers ready.

4:59 And then eventually those high stakes test scores are going to come in. You're going to analyze them, which is necessary. But if that's what we're waiting for time and again to see if the instructional initiative that we worked on in October has been successful or has been a failure, that's a problem. If you wait for the end of year data, you have essentially spent 180 days of teacher energy and student time. On a guess, like we hope this is going to work. By the time those scores hit your desk, the kids have moved on to the next grade level and your staff is likely already bracing themselves for whatever new initiative you're going to announce in August because the last one didn't seem to move the needle.

6:02 Am I making sense with this? When we are implementing a campus school, like we have an area of focus and we have some goals that are helping us to attain that focus, we have to measure implementation a lot more intentionally than just looking at a spreadsheet of scores. So here's the big question that I want you to ask. How is this data related to what we actually want to know? How is this data related to what we actually want to know? OK, I want to look at an example. It's an example that I've I've talked about in previous episodes. So if you haven't caught those other episodes, this is remember the 4th of 4 episodes.

6:51 So Part 1, we looked at leading instructional change and thinking about you're like, what's the one thing? What is the one thing that we are focused on? And then in episode 2, we decided we were thinking, OK, well, how do we move from directing this focus to people being driven by this focus? And then Part 3 was what do we do about feedback so people don't burn out? OK, so those were the the former 3 episodes. And today we're in this fourth episodes. So definitely go back and listen to those because you'll hear me talk about area of focus and goals. So think about area of focus as like this broad umbrella.

7:33 This is what our campus is focused on this year. And then we've analyzed that to determine a couple of goals that are going to help us strive toward that. OK, so let's say that your campus focus is improving math proficiency. OK, And hold on just a second. Let me take a look at this. OK, so I'm taking a look at a campus that I worked with looking at their their improvement plan. Well, really I'm looking at their clarity cycle framework plan because they took their campus improvement plan. We went through the Clarity cycle framework to really identify, OK, what is it we can actually work on that's going to move the needle with math proficiency. When we made that change and we stopped looking so significantly at math scores, math scores, math scores, and we instead started thinking about a different kind of data to decide, well, if we if we wanted to focus on math scores. But we realized part of the reason that students may be struggling is because they lack motivation and engagement during their math classes.

8:51 Then we've got to look at a different kind of data and see what it is we can do to move the needle. Let's see if that impacts math scores. And I'm telling you, it made the biggest difference in the world. OK, so that's the example that we're looking at is here's the area focus improving math proficiency. The major goal to help them to improve proficiency was increasing student engagement and motivation through high quality Tier 1 instruction. OK, so that's one of their major goals. So yes, we're going to look at the math assessment data eventually, but we don't want to wait to see if oh we we failed or we were successful.

9:36 We want to collect data as it's happening so we can make adjustments in the moment and keep the momentum going. So what is the data that we actually collected or monitored when it came to engagement? There was walkthrough data. Are we seeing those specific look fors that we agreed we would implement when we started scripting critical moves toward these goals? Listening tours? What are the teachers actually saying about the hurdles that they're hitting or about the successes that they are experiencing? Student surveys.

10:19 My goodness, who better to ask about motivation than the students that are in the seats in the classrooms? Student surveys. And as far as that goes, you could also conduct parent surveys, look at your attendance data, look at tardies, look at behavior trends, right? What this, all of this data is directly connected to this campus goal of improving engagement through Tier 1 instruction. And then we can also later on take a look at math assessment data.

11:00 Now also with that said, I am a firm, firm, firm believer in collecting assessment data continuously. So I'm thinking, yes, we have the end of unit, end of nine weeks, end of year assessment, but we also should have common formative assessments taking place so that we can monitor student progress on the academic side. And that could be done during your PLC meetings or during your, if you have regular data meetings, but you also need to attach, OK, well, how is this related to the walkthrough data in our instruction? Right.

11:41 So there's, it's, there's so much that can be gained if we look outside of just the assessment data. This will tell you if you're collecting the right data. It's going to tell you if this change, this instructional change that you're trying to lead is sticking today, not six months from now, right? And there's this common myth in education. And I remember getting so frustrated when I was an instructional leader, I would hear, I would get frustrated in the moment that we weren't making progress because we're all of these these blockers in place that prevented us from making progress, that I thought we can change these things and actually make progress.

12:31 And we would, we never would were able to do that. And and so I would hear people say, well, don't forget, it takes about three years for change to happen. But then what happens when the three years passes and you're like, wait a minute, I still don't see that change has happened. It's so defeating. I believe that it's a common myth in education specifically that real campus change takes three to five years. I think that's a little bit of a cop out. I I believe when you have true clarity, when you're monitoring the right data, you can make significant change happen in a lot less than three years. The caveat to that is you have to be willing to take a hard look at the clarity of the focus and goals that you have and take a hard look at the data you're collecting. Is that data helping you to monitor progress or is it just confirming a failure after it feels too late to fix it? And that's what I feel like is happening more often than not in education is we are just confirming a failure after it's too late to fix it.

13:45 This is exactly what I do when I partner with schools. We look at your focus, we script those critical moves, and then we build a monitoring system together that helps you keep your staff driven. OK folks, that was a pretty short episode. And that wraps up our series on leading instructional change that actually sticks. We have covered bridging the gap between knowing and doing, moving from directive to driven, thinking about feedback intentionally. And then today we talked about monitoring the right kind of data. So your challenge this week, look at your last data meeting.

14:26 Was it a productive conversation about growth or was it post mortem? Go back to the clarity cycle framework rubric. I've got that in the show notes and you can evaluate your progress monitoring system when it as it relates to your campus goals and focus. So if you're ready to stop this post mortem cycle, let's talk about the Clarity Cycle framework partnership together. I would love to work with you to make change happen in your school. All right guys, so that's a wrap. I look forward to catching you in the next episode. Bye. Hey listener, I am so honored that you listen to today's episode and I hope you gained something valuable from it.

15:10 I'd also be honored if you did ME3 solid favors. First, subscribe to this show. I've got a lot of great content coming up, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Second, be sure you're following me on social media platforms. You can find me at. Catch up with Casey on LinkedIn or Instagram. And finally, if you were looking to book a dynamic and relatable speaker for your next event, conference, or retreat, I would love to bring a message about how the crash of clarity makes a significant impact on both leadership and life. Until next time, always remember clarity receives capacity.