Featuring the Work of K-12 Outreach’s Data and Evaluation Team
Over the next few weeks, K-12 staff members, teachers, and administrators are likely to have a lot of numbers flying at them following the release of results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – a test “administered every other year to grades 4 and 8, and 12th grade every four years” to a sample of schools as a means of better understanding current educational attainment across the United States (Michigan Department of Education; Chalkbeat Detroit). On top of a slew of data points related to these scores, educators and school leaders will surely also face their traditional, daily barrage of education-related facts and figures tied to attendance rates, behavioral incidents, local and state assessments, projected graduation figures, and more. Further, this reality only gets more complex when one broadens their understanding of data to include observations, anecdotes, and insights from conversations with peer educators and education stakeholders, including students, parents and guardians, and community members. Knowing the limited time in folks’ days and the copious other responsibilities they are tasked with, the temptation to disengage with education statistics or not make time for rigorous analysis of them is understandable.
At the same time, the reality is that “data-driven decision-making can be a critical tool to address resource disparities, enhance student success, and promote equitable outcomes,” as it helps teachers and school leaders glean “insights into student performance, attendance patterns, disciplinary actions, and more” rather than rely on assumptions about students’ experiences, backgrounds, and potential (IES – NCEE). Observing this disconnect between the challenge of making time for data analysis in schools and its importance, the Office of K-12 Outreach, as part of its broader mission to develop and implement customized support for schools and districts in Michigan seeking to turnaround their schools and rapidly improve student achievement, invested in its own Data and Evaluation Team (December 2023 In Focus newsletter). This arm of K-12 Outreach is led by Dr. Jacqueline Gardner, and it includes Associate Director of Data and Evaluation Tyler Thur, Graduate Assistant Abigail Bies, Student Data Assistant Reis Davis, and Student Data Assistant Wyatt Flatt. Broadly speaking, K-12 Outreach’s Data and Evaluation Team’s functions can be broken into three chunks – direct engagement with K-12 districts, support for K-12 Outreach’s suite of programs, and research and service to inform the K-12 education ecosystem.
The Data and Evaluation Team’s direct partnership with various K-12 institutions across Michigan is visible in a few initiatives. For one, they have collaborated with districts concerning Michigan Profile for Healthy Youth (MiPHY) survey data and related measures of student well-being, potentially risky behavior, and climate and culture perceptions. Emblematically, K-12 Outreach’s Data and Evaluation Team worked with Grand Ledge Public Schools, Eaton Regional Education Service Agency, and Sparrow Eaton Hospital to inform district health curriculum and a new school-based health center’s priorities based on student experiences reported via MiPHY surveys and a locally-design needs assessment (April 2024 In Focus newsletter; January 2024 In Focus newsletter). Relatedly, the Data and Evaluation Team is presently engaging Potterville Public Schools and Eaton Regional Education Service Agency to explore potential explanations for changing reported student behavior using descriptive statistics and correlation analyses. Second, the direct tie between local districts and the K-12 Outreach Data and Evaluation team is visible in alliances built around progress monitoring and benchmarking efforts in Flint Community Schools and the Lansing School District to support these entities’ continuous improvement and attainment of partnership agreement goals designed with the Michigan Department of Education’s support (December 2024 In Focus newsletter). Historically, this work has included analyzing, visualizing, and sharing district data related to benchmark assessments like the NWEA and DIBELS tests, state instruments like the M-STEP, student attendance and behavior, and graduation rates. Finally, the Data and Evaluation Team has directly engaged a host of districts to support data capacity-building for their staff members. For instance, Dr. Jacqueline Gardner and Tyler Thur have presented to Aspiring Leaders from the Lansing School District via the Lansing Leadership Modules on data obligations related to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student achievement, Lansing’s student growth and achievement data, and Michigan’s framework for school accountability (January 2023 In Focus newsletter). Similarly, these two leaders of the Data and Evaluation Team, with K-12 Outreach Director Dr. Bryan Beverly, previously presented during a Benton Harbor Area Schools professional learning forum on the importance of data analysis in schools, how educators might expand their understanding of what data include, and how to utilize various NWEA reports to support student learning (May 2021 In Focus newsletter).
As another facet of their work helping advance K-12 Outreach’s mission, the Data and Evaluation Team has supported existing offerings from the broader office. For example, for the Fellowship of Instructional Leaders (FIL) program in both Flint and Lansing, focused on supporting the work and professional learning of these districts’ instructional leadership teams and ensuring their attainment of local and state goals, the Data and Evaluation Team has prepared district-level data for session attendees to analyze and co-designed customized supports to ensure that this information shapes pedagogical practices (December 2024 In Focus newsletter; June 2024 In Focus newsletter; February 2024 In Focus newsletter). Additionally, the Data and Evaluation Team has supported the Office of K-12 Outreach through program evaluations of various offerings designed to inform the structure, content, and implementation of future professional learning opportunities. Whether at an event as part of K-12 Outreach’s engagement with Eastpointe Community Schools, the Education Policy Fellowship Program, Emerging Leaders, or something else, session attendees can expect to complete a program evaluation survey asking them to reflect on their experience and offer formative feedback for future programming. Each response is processed, summarized, and reported on by the Data and Evaluation Team. Further, for some of K-12 Outreach’s programming, the Data and Evaluation Team oversees pre- and post-testing of participants’ self-reported abilities and knowledge to measure the effectiveness of various offerings.
Finally, the Data and Evaluation Team aids in K-12 Outreach’s attainment of its mission through research and outreach endeavors. First, concerning its own efforts, this unit has led specific research projects, most recently an investigation of how districts used their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds (August 2024 In Focus newsletter). Insights from this initiative, supported by a Michigan Applied Public Policy Research (MAPPR) grant from the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) at Michigan State University, will both inform K-12 Outreach’s direct support of districts statewide along with their policy advocacy efforts at the local, state, and federal levels (November 2024 In Focus newsletter; August 2024 In Focus newsletter). Second, the Data and Evaluation Team has provided technical assistance to other grant projects that the Office of K-12 Outreach is engaged with, including “a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to create more sustainable and equitable food systems” via “the Sustainable Agricultural Systems program of the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture,” a grant exploring student discipline data and potentially useful interventions for educators funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and the Brady Education Foundation, and state-funded inquiries related to educator shortages, which are featured in this month’s edition of Emerging Research (April 2023 In Focus newsletter; Rudolph, 2023; November 2023 In Focus newsletter; April 2022 In Focus newsletter). Finally, the Data and Evaluation Team has committed to improving the K-12 education ecosystem in Michigan through outreach and service. Representatively, their Director of Data and Evaluation, Dr. Jacqueline Gardner, serves on the board of the Michigan Educational Research Association, helping advance data conversations across the state and plan this organization’s professional learning opportunities for educators and administrators.
Altogether, the Office of K-12 Outreach’s Data and Evaluation Team has had the privilege to collaborate with a wide variety of partners, including local school districts, regional education service agencies and intermediate school districts, colleges and universities, associations, and non-profit organizations, to meet districts’ unique data-related needs. In this time, they have honed their ability to analyze education data, build districts’ capacity to utilize this data, conduct impactful education research, facilitate high-quality professional learning experiences, develop customized data-related tools and materials for schools, coach school and district leaders, and oversee evaluations (May 2021 In Focus newsletter; February 2021 In Focus newsletter). Over the next few months, the K-12 Outreach Data and Evaluation Team is excited to continue its many ongoing projects with these partners and collaborate with new entities interested in digging into the rich data surrounding them. More information about this work is available via the Data and Evaluation Team’s website and this publication. Additionally, prospective partners can reach out to Dr. Jacqueline Gardner at swans126@msu.edu.
Learn more about the K-12 Outreach Data and Evaluation Team online!