Day 3 of the 21 Day Daily Data Challenge

It's Day 3  of the 21 Day Daily Data Challenge and it was about locating your School Improvement goals.  I am embarrassed to say, but I had only a vague idea of what the School Improvement goals were for my school (something about writing) and  I had absolutely no idea where to find them.  Luckily, I went to the source of all knowledge in our school, the Principal's secretary, and she located the School Improvement Plan with goals inside and I was set.  I discovered however, my school only has one goal. It was about writing and it was very generic. Maybe that's how School Improvement goals are supposed to be?  I was expecting it to be more specific, more quantifiable.  Our one goal goes like this: "All teachers will collaboratively establish expectations for high quality writing instruction and student feeback in the content areas, as they consistently meet those expectations in the classroom."  See what I mean?  Very generic.  I have been trying to incorporate more writing in my classroom lessons by using Interactive Student Notebooks (but that is another post).  I'm just not sure how we measure, as a school, if we met our goal.

How did your search go for your School Improvement goals?  Did you know what they were?  Were you surprised at their content?  Were yours more specific than mine?  Do you see how you could possibly support the School Improvement goals in your school counseling program?  Remember I am interested in hearing your experiences.  Please share them each day on the Exploring School Counseling Facebook page or in the comment section below.

Tomorrow is Day 4 and it is about collecting attendance data.  I learned how to find this on our district's computer system last school year, but I've only ever seen it listed by name and number of absences and tardies.  I am hoping there may be a report by gender, grade and ethnicity  for my school or I'm going to be doing some calculating by hand!

If you are interested in the 21 Day Daily Data Challenge you may join us at anytime in the process. The idea is to get into the data for your school to enable you to make evidence based decisions that empower you and drive your school counseling program.  Go to the link HERE for all the details.

Happy Data Hunting!