Dive Brief:
- A new survey of 200 educators at ISTE from Lexia Learning found that only 35% of respondents felt teachers at their school were comfortable connecting data with changes to instruction.
- Fewer than half of the respondents felt that their interim assessment systems gave them a clear sense of whether a student was on track or not.
- More (54%) felt that the assessments they use told them if interventions were working, but few said the tests gave them useful feedback to change their instruction if an intervention wasn’t working.
Dive Insight:
The Lexia Learning survey echoes the results of larger-scale studies, including one from the Gates Foundation that found most teachers unsatisfied with the information they got from digital tools.
As data is increasingly used to evaluate and adapt teachers’ classroom practices, its validity is vital. If teachers are uncomfortable with how to use it, that creates a significant hurdle to making effective changes in the classroom. And the results indicate that most teachers view data as simply telling them if something is working or not, rather than giving any aid in figuring out how to change it.
The survey also raised the specter of overtesting. An overwhelming majority of those surveyed (83%) said progress assessments should take less than 30 minutes. As for how many said their chosen assessment could do that: less than half.
