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10 Strategies For Creating A Culture of Data-Driven Improvement
10 Strategies For Creating A Culture of Data-Driven Improvement
of Data-Driven Improvement
How Uplift Education, a Texas-based charter network,
uses data to set goals and catalyze school improvement.
At Panorama, we are proud to partner with innovative educators who are using
data to create school change and improve student outcomes. Rich Harrison,
Chief Academic Officer of Uplift Education, a public charter network in the
greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, shares how Uplift has leveraged a culture of
data-driven improvement to help teachers develop their teaching practice and
measure student growth.
About Uplift Education Here’s what Rich Harrison has to say about how educators and administrators can
promote a culture of data-driven inquiry and improvement in their schools:
• Serves 14,000 students
Figure 4 - On a survey of 910 staff members, Uplift staff ranked Uplift highly as a good
place to work. Creating cultures of sharing and mutual support promotes camaraderie and
pride.
Figure 6 - Uplift establishes growth targets centrally for students (usually to achieve 1.5
times their original score in each core content area) and works with teachers and students
to help them meet them.
9. Promote buy-in.
We want our students and teachers to know that their voices and experiences
are a critical part of creating the school experiences we want them to have. We
work with Panorama to learn more about what’s happening with school culture
and how students feel about social-emotional indicators. Getting this kind of
stakeholder feedback—and matching it to our data about student achievement,
attendance, and behavior—gives us deeper insight into how to help our students
and faculty grow and develop.
All of these fields are working on the same questions we are: what metrics
allow us to predict success? How can we do a better job of using data to
track improvement? Learning from other fields is an opportunity for me to
challenge myself, and hopefully I can better support my colleagues in
building the stronger academic experiences we want our students to have.
“
We used Panorama's SEL measures in five topics last year. In this pilot, we found
all five SEL topics had a positive relationship with student growth and
performance on MAP and ACT scores. This relationship was strongest with Grit.
This year, we will use the SEL measures with all of our students in grades 3-12 to
better understand how social-emotional learning can be used as a lever to
improve school culture, academic performance, and college readiness and
“
persistence.”
Rich Harrison - Chief Academic Officer, Uplift Education
Rich Harrison - After serving as the founding Middle School Director for the Denver School
of Science and Technology (DSST), Rich Harrison joined Uplift Education in 2011 to lead the
Teaching and Learning Team. Rich graduated from the University of Chicago and taught
middle and high school English in New York City and Denver for seven years. His first
leadership role was as a principal and English teacher for KIPP: Cole College Prep, which was
the first conversion charter school in US. In addition to working as the Chief Academic
Officer of Uplift Education, Rich is the managing director of three school sites in the
network.