DataWORKS Educational Research

DataWORKS Educational Research was founded in 1997 with the single purpose of using real data to improve student learning, especially for low-performing students. At first, we thought that using real data meant disaggregating student achievement data, and that’s what we did. Through word of mouth, we rapidly expanded from analyzing one district’s state test results to analyzing the data for more than 600 schools. Schools and districts loved our colorful disaggregated data charts and graphs and our interpretations of what the data meant. In 2000, Corwin Press published our book with Joan Ardovino on assessments, Multiple Measures: Accurate Ways to Assess Student Achievement. We then broadly expanded the “data” in DataWORKS to include measurement of classroom teaching practices. We began collecting student work to see WHAT students were being taught and we went ino classrooms alongside educators to see HOW students were being taught. We discovered that when teaching practices improved, student test scores did too. Focus on Classroom Instruction The focus of DataWORKS then became classroom instruction, knowing that we could help improve education by focusing on how students are taught, rather than analyzing test scores. Teaching (student input), rather than testing (student output) is key to student learning and achievement. We did our own classroom investigations so that we really understood educational processes and were able to connect what research was saying to what was — or wasn’t — happening in the classroom. We did this by going into thousands of classrooms to measure and quantify the actual techniques being used, observing how students were, in fact, being taught.