District Strives To Utilize Student Data By Stephanie Mariel Petrellese

The Garden City Board of Education listened to a presentation entitled "Data Collection to Inform Instruction" at its October 10th work session.

"Districts are awash in student data," said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Feirsen. "We in Garden City have been working very hard to organize this data, use this data and inform our work with them." Besides demographic data, the district is concerned with gathering all of the student performance information possible to help students achieve.

Dr. Feirsen has been especially impressed with the principals at the primary schools, who have studied available data and used it to develop ways to encourage student literacy. Hemlock School Principal Linda Norton, Homestead School Principal Dr. Suzanne Viscovich and Locust School Principal Adam Winnick discussed their approach at the work session.

The data primary school teachers have been using is comprised of a child's Early Literacy Profile (ELP), running records and writing samples, and anecdotal notes taken by the teacher. The ELP is a New York State assessment given to all primary students in late September or early October. It includes rhyming words, lower-case letter identification, letter sounds, spelling words and high-frequency words and provides a baseline for students as they begin kindergarten.

Even though informal, focused and brief anecdotal notes taken by a teacher have proven to be an effective way to chart student development over an extended period of time. Teachers in the district have also been keeping a monthly running record of student progress. Principals meet periodically with teachers to examine each student's record.

Stuart Dods, mathematics district coordinator, gave a short presentation on analyzing assessment data. The district is now a member of the BOCES Data Warehouse, a collection service that provides a systematic way to collect data from state assessments given to students in grades 3 through 8. It features easy-to-use data analysis menus and an opportunity for parallel analysis. According to Dods, it is possible that it can be used one day to collect data from Regents examinations.