Dive Brief:
- Many school districts are starting to use new tools that collect data and help inform decision-making, but sometimes it is simply a matter of using data that is already being collected anyway.
- EdTech: Focus on K-12 reports Google Classroom recently added a tool that allows administrators to track usage trends for tools students and teachers currently use, and some teachers are asking students to track their own grades through programs like Google Forms to maintain accountability.
- School districts can even look outside of their own boundaries for publicly available data on things like educational funding to determine whether state formulas are fair, and to advocate for changes if they’re not.
Dive Insight:
For many educational technologies, it is easy to get them into classrooms and have teachers and students use them. What's harder is capturing useful data from those technologies and using it to inform instruction. The schools doing the best with ed tech implementation have a district-level vision for collecting and using data.
Many schools even make decisions about what technologies to bring into classrooms based on the type of data they collect and organize for staff analysis. Teachers often have limited capacity to do their own analyses, whether because of time or ability, and an important factor in making purchasing decisions should be how easy it is to track key metrics using the ed tech. Tracking and reflection are critical for continued improvement.
