Educational Leadership with Principal JL
Principal JL is an educational leader who explores various topics facing educational leaders today! The Mission of this podcast is to inform and inspire other Educational Leaders on how to be their best for their Schools by honing their skills and talents so they may impact their teachers, staff members, students, parents/guardians, and community members positively for their School District! Come with a Growth Mindset as we journey through Educational Leadership!
Educational Leadership with Principal JL
Episode 17: Coach'EM Up Leadership Series: Data-Driven Decision Making, it's not Glamorous but Necessary!
Unlock the secrets of harnessing data to revolutionize educational leadership! Discover how effective data-driven decision-making can transform student attendance and uplift teacher performance, all while fostering a supportive school culture. This episode guides you through strategies used by school improvement teams to identify and address challenges like chronic absenteeism, ensuring accountability and proactive interventions. Additionally, we dive into the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) model and how it can be pivotal in nipping issues in the bud before they escalate into bigger concerns.
But that's not all—hear about the transformative power of data in empowering teachers. Evaluation tools are essential, yet building strong, supportive relationships with educators is key. We explore ways to collaborate with teachers, understand their goals, and use data to drive progress, ultimately enriching the entire school environment. Plus, we open the floor for listener engagement, inviting you to share feedback and questions. Be sure to catch our chat with Angela Kelly, an inspiring principal leader, who will share her insights on balancing the demands of professional and personal life. Join us for this enlightening episode and aim to be 1% better every day!
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Email: the.principal.jl@gmail.com
Welcome back educational leaders. Today we're going to continue our Coach Em Up leadership series. Today's topic is data-driven decision-making. Now, I know this is not the most sexiest topic to talk about, because when people are talking about data, they start to roll their eyes. They're yawning there, you know, they start tuning out. Oh, we want to make data driven decisions. Well, guess what? To be an effective leader, making data driven decision making is really important and it's not a glamorous part of the job, but it's something that we have to do if we want to get our school and our teachers and our building and our expectations in the right direction.
Principal JL:So today I'm going to talk about utilizing data driven decision making at a couple of different levels. One I'm going to talk about it from the principal level, from the building level to where hey, how can we use data as principals to really drive improvement in our building? And what I do is I utilize my school improvement team to help with that, because they help me identify issues that they see at the building level. And then we utilize a what data can we use? What metric can we use to improve that area? And then I'll also talk about, you know, at the teacher level like, not teachers using data, but how can I, as a principal, use data with my teachers for improvement? Because that's another piece that's really important when you're utilizing data as a principal to use when you are trying to help your teaching staff to improve and make them better, so we can make everybody in the building better. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and start at the building level. So, at the building level, you know, I utilize my school improvement team and they'll say, hey, mr Lennon, here are some issues we're seeing, and one issue from the time I started was students' attendance. Right, that was something they were talking about before I showed up and it was something we continue to talk about Now.
Principal JL:Student attendance isn't something that is nationwide. This is everybody's going through. How can we get our students back in the buildings learning, but also, you know, to help make sure kids are there so they can learn the information, so they can become better. But it's frustrating because when you have students not in the classroom regularly, it's really tough on those teachers to educate those students when they're not there. Now I'm just going to just talk about student attendance and generalities. I'm not going to get into the wheeze a lot of it. But we have issues with our student's attendance and that's something that we decided as a school improvement team that we would tackle.
Principal JL:Now, before we tackle the student attendance piece, the first thing that we did is we looked at how do we view the culture of rebuilding? Where are we at? Are we inviting, you know? Are we an inviting culture? Are we, you know, telling kids we're glad to see them here? You know, all those things were set in place before we really got into tacking students' attendance.
Principal JL:Now, when we were looking at how to improve our students' attendance, we looked at a couple of different metrics or measures, and that's really what you got to understand is, every situation that you are working through will have some sort of metrics, of a way to measure, to see if you're improving in those areas. And if you don't have a way to measure it, sometimes you might have to create that measurement. So for us, we utilize the daily average attendance rate and we look at chronic absenteeism. So we looked at, kind of what our patterns were and where do we see the issues, and our biggest question was we wanted to like find out a way to have some sort of consequence for not coming to school. Now, of course, you have truancy, you have all those things, but a lot of that stuff sways kids not to come to school. But there need to be more from our end to help hold people accountable.
Principal JL:And so we had a policy to where we would take full credit from students, but this policy was never really followed. It really was something that was on the books, but it was never something that we actually did. So it was actually one of my assistant principals saw a presentation at Administrator Days about, you know, students' attendance at a high school and what this high school was doing. They answered some of the questions we were asking, because our biggest thing is, yeah, you could take credit from somebody, but what do you do with them? I mean, they're not going to be in that class anymore. You know where do you stick them, and with us we have a thousand students.
Principal JL:So being able to pull a kid and put them somewhere else was really really tough for us to do. So we looked at it from a different lens that this school was looking at. What if we looked at pulling half credit? Right and so that would allow the kid? Yeah, okay, you'd missed so many days. We're going to pull half credit. But we had an appeals process that we as well, because parents know like their kids got to come to school, and so we had everything laid out. This make it work for us.
Principal JL:And we figured out how to pull the data we needed, how to monitor the students' attendance, to where we can get early interventions. And then this is where we came in with the MTSS model, to where we would utilize tiers of interventions depending on that student's attendance. And so we were trying to get really proactive with the attendance piece by getting to the kids earlier, really tracking that data so we can help them before it becomes a problem with truancy and then the law. We really didn't want to get there, but that took a lot of people working together, and so our leadership team will meet. We have an attendance committee that meets once a week in our leadership team and we can identify the kids that, hey, these kids aren't attending. Oh, here's our first level of interventions. Okay, they're getting to this level. We'll go to the second tier when we get to the third tier now, we're referring them to the STARS program, which is actually a program within our community that helps families, help them remove barriers so they can make it to school and so attendance doesn't become an issue.
Principal JL:So, really utilizing what piece of data we needed you know how we're going to use that following that data, spotting patterns, taking action then we were always looking to make improvements. Now I would say we started this attendance policy this past fall and throughout the first semester we actually had a 3.79% increase in daily average attendance and we were able to reduce our chronic absenteeism by 8.5%, and so being able to look at that data and have something to measure it against really showed that. Hey, you know what? What we implemented is working. It is something that is working for us and it's helping our kids get in school, because attendance is an issue. And guess what? Our kids are more present in school, they are in the classroom learning, and so I'm really excited to see what our data is going to show later.
Principal JL:So we utilize in Nebraska the ACT in the high school and we utilize that data. Now we look at that data. But you got to understand what those state of standards assessments are. They are basically a snapshot of where you students are at that point. It's good data to have, but you have to look at other pieces of data around that piece to make it make sense. You can't just say here's your test scores, we did good or bad. I hate the fact that we utilize the ACT as a way to measure the success of a school, because there's so many more variables that you can look at to help measure the success of the school.
Principal JL:And so one of the things we worked on really hard on the past year actually since I've been here but we started implementing this year was that attendance piece and we're seeing the fruits of that labor and so really the shout out to the school improvement team and my assistant principal and everybody the teachers and staff that work really hard to help break down those barriers, help those kids attend school so we can have them be in class, so they can learn and be more successful. Now we'll look at other data pieces as we get going, and so this will be an ongoing story for us on where we're at, because really this spring will tell a story to where you know, kind of how we land overall as a school year. But we are starting off really well with that with that piece. So that is from like a builder level, how you can utilize data, how you can look at spotting patterns, take in action, and then how do you keep improving upon the action that you take? So that is one piece. Now another piece is you can utilize data to help your teacher storm and grow.
Principal JL:Now we all have some sort of evaluation tool. All right, it's a tool and that's why I look at it. I don't look at it as a way you know, I don't like playing the gotcha game, right, and so when I look at an evaluation, yes, you're going to get a score, but what does that score mean? I mean, different models have different meanings to their score and it is a data piece that you can utilize. But outside of utilizing the rubrics in the evaluation tool, where you're looking at you know walkthroughs and you're having those conversations don't look at.
Principal JL:You cannot, as a principal, just utilize the tool a couple of times a year for a teacher you got to try to get in there as much as possible and to where you're doing walkthroughs, you're trying to get the evaluation done, but you're also having conversations with your staff. Outside of that, you're not going in there evaluating them every time. You might want to go and visit your staff just to see how they're doing. Just check in on them and say, hey, just checking in and see how you're doing. Because what that does is it sets that relationship with your staff to go. You know what, every time I see the principal, he's not here just to evaluate me, he's not here just to check up on me to see if I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. He's actually just checking up, seeing how things are going and hopefully providing that support.
Principal JL:So I really work hard to try to help my teachers understand. When I come in I just want to see what's going on. You know, I want to kind of help them in any way I can. But then there's that evaluation piece that we utilize. But I try to not make the evaluation the number one thing that I utilize with my staff. So when I'm talking about you know, teacher performance and trying to help them get better, I want to know I always do pre-meetings and post-meetings before I even get into the evaluation piece.
Principal JL:I want to know what that teacher's goals are. I want to know, hey, what are you working on? Because your teaching staff, you know if they have the growth mindset, they're going to be working on something. It's my job to figure out how can I support them in that work and, hey, where are some things you're struggling with to where I can maybe try to provide some resources. So, what are your goals? Let's get really clear on what your goals are and then how I can support you with those goals.
Principal JL:And then you got to find different ways to measure that goal and so you know it could be. You know, yeah, you can use student data, you can utilize state testing, you can utilize so many different things. But ask that teacher, how are you going to measure this, how are you going to find the success? And then you look at that data with them and you go, you coach them side by side guys, you get side by side with them with the data that they present and say, oh, here's some patterns we're seeing, here's some, you know, some resources we can look at. And then maybe let's try some different things. And as a principal, as a educational leader, you got to be able to be an instructional leader at times and you got to be able to help your teachers and provide feedback and try to help them get over the hump on some things. That's where the collaboration piece really takes hold when you make, when you look at a teacher valuation and you're collaborating with them, but utilizing data to do that, it makes it much more impactful, much more powerful and helps that teacher learn and grow even that much more effectively. So there's lots of ways you can do this, you know. But at the same time you want to pull different data pieces and different things in to help that staff.
Principal JL:Now I'm being very generic and basic. I can go into specific details on some of this, but I'm not going to do that on my podcast because I don't want to be calling out anybody. So I'm not going to get into specifics. But I will talk about how things are done broadly in this episode because, yes, I can talk Billy level stuff, I can get in a little bit more detail on that, but I'm not going to get into the day-to-day interactions with my teachers because that's information just for us to go through. At the same time, being a practicing principal, I'm going to keep that information confidential. But at the same time I am willing to talk to people in generalities about how to help their teachers get better. But if you wanted to know more on a side note, on a private conversation, I can get into more specifics, but I'm not going to do that with the podcast.
Principal JL:Overall, it is important to use data Like it's not the most, like I said earlier, it's not the sexiest thing to do, but at the same time, it's an important piece of us making teachers and making your building better, and there's so many different ways you can use it. There's so many different metrics and measurements that you can utilize to make your building better. I just gave you like one example with attendance, and I gave you kind of a scenario with a teacher knowing that, hey, what kind of data pieces could you use? But also how can you help support teachers use data and their own improvement, and so that's really important. How do we utilize this data and what is your goal? So when you start thinking about goals and what you want to improve upon, you got to start thinking about what data are we going to use so we can measure if we are making improvements, and that's super important to remember as you go through and utilize data to help yourself make decisions.
Principal JL:Don't be afraid of utilizing data. It is something that will help you. It's actually information that's super important and valuable if you use it correctly. I know, and you know, you could take data and spin it. I'm a math teacher. All right, when I was a math teacher, I can make data, make people believe what my data say. However, I want to say it, but you really got to be objective with it. You got to really understand what is this data really measuring? What does it really say? What is the story behind it? But then utilizing that data to spot patterns over a period of time will help you really nail down what you need to improve on. Then you got to figure out an action plan for that and then, once you get the action plan in, you got to start monitoring it, utilizing that metrics that you decided to utilize. And is the improvement making it? Is it, you know, doing what you want it to do? And if you have all those things down, that is the best way to utilize data to make decision making.
Principal JL:So if you guys really enjoyed this episode or any episodes, I really like you guys to really share my podcast with other people. Put out a review. I would love to hear back from you. I would love to hear the things that you have enjoyed about the podcast and some things that you've taken away. If this podcast is valuable, I'd really like you to share it with other educational leaders, or maybe an inspiring leader and those people. I want to create this community to where we can have these talks and this information, to where we can help each other learn and grow as educational leaders. So, if you really like this, I really like to subscribe to the podcast.
Principal JL:I really like to hear some feedback. You can email me at theprincipaljl at gmailcom. That's super easy to do. I'm also on TikTok. I have everything down in the show notes, guys. You can go down in the footer and you can find all my social media links and all my email links to where you can get in touch with me on a regular basis. But also a fan mail click is also a good way to reach out, because what that will do it was actually send me text messages from you saying, hey, I really, you know, give me feedback, I really love this part about your show, or hey, I have a question about this. And if there's anything that you have questions about, feel free to reach out. I would love to answer those and I would love to create this community of everybody helping each other as well, and I will also, you know, look to give you a shout out if you go ahead and give me some feedback. So I always want to recognize the people that are watching the show or not watching or listening to the show and being able to provide feedback into the show, because I want to be here for you guys to where you guys are getting valuable information and you guys are finding value in the content that I'm creating.
Principal JL:So, with that said, I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode of the Coach Em Up Leadership Series. This is really fun to do. I only got maybe a couple episodes left, guys, of this Coach Em Up Leadership Series, but I have some really exciting educators coming on the show. I'm lining up interviews left and right right now and it's a lot of fun. I'm really excited to release next week's episode with Angela Kelly.
Principal JL:I'm really excited to release next week's episode with Angela Kelly. She's an empowered principal leader to where really she takes her coaching and her educational leadership experience and wraps them in and helps educational leaders be the best they can be and also help them balance their life with being a principal, but also with their family. So that's an exciting episode that actually will be released next week. So hopefully you tune in on this, that one as well. So, hey, I'm going to go ahead and let you guys go. This was a fun one. Like I said, we're talking about data-driven decision-making isn't always exciting, but it's important part of what we do. And then, as I like always say, always look to be 1% better.
