Values-Directed & Data-Driven

 

Good Morning,

 

Though I have responded separately to Ken McCarthy, one of our treasured colleagues in MN, others have asked to be directed to the data the districts and NUA reference.  Please know a data summary along with testimonials are located on our homepage at www.nuatc.org.  Please also know we have deep convictions about data-driven accountability goals as well as values-directed interventions.  With district leadership and stakeholders, we intervene to help students score well on high stakes test, as well as in the more important tasks of: problem-solving, creative, critical and reflective thinking, collaboration, communication and retention of rigorous content for mastery.

NUA district partner data is used to support an irrefutable belief that virtually all students will succeed academically and in life long learning when guided by highly skilled and confident teachers. Though the data is specific to results on high stakes tests, student artifacts also suggest K-12 high intellectual performance in content and cognitive processing. It should be emphasized that NUA is, and NUA fosters with our partners, a learning organization approach to realization of values that drive action, pursuit of goals, achievement of objectives and taking direction from useful data appropriate to those values, goals and objectives.  As Carol Dweck's research has guided, we seek to support "growth mindsets" as opposed to the "fixed mindsets" which fixate the learner on working for the grade or score on a test rather than the journey of discovery.  When students and teachers learn that a relentless focus on increasingly complex content is ultimately more important than the grades students receive, the more successful students become.  Data must be worthy in the sense they drive educational systems in the right direction, worthy in the sense they index the acquisition of a socially valued cognitive capability over the school years, worthy in the sense they are sensitive to instruction and genuinely useful in the targeting of resources, and finally, worthy since they are fair and in accord with American ideas of equal educational opportunity.

We hope the data is useful to your purposes, but as we all are aware, please recognize the central role the teacher, principal, administration, students and parents play in learning and achievement.  All to say there are many important intervening variables at work as the learner moves through the academic pipeline, hopefully when he/she moves into an adult role they are prepared for our democratic society, know how to access social capital, and recognize that "...expertise is an acquired skill, not an innate one."  There are no shortcuts to becoming an expert.  As Andres Erickson has researched, it takes approximately 40,000 hours of guided and deliberative practice to become an expert in your field of choice.

In partnership as our collective journey unfolds,

Eric @ www.nuatc.org

"Liberty does not consist in mere general declarations of the rights of men. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action." -- Woodrow Wilson, Address, Independence Hall, July 4, 1914

 

 

 

 

 

In a message dated 2/2/2011 11:38:38 Eastern Standard Time, Ken.McCarthy@wayzata.k12.mn.us writes:

Can anyone direct me to any current research that shows NUA has a positive effect on student learning?  We are trying to keep our district funding for NUA.

Ken

 

Ken McCarthy

Peer Coach/Science Teacher

Wayzata Public Schools

763-745-6931

"The most important factor for

student achievement is the classroom teacher"

(Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001)