Data Drill-Down Trainings

District and school staff have lots of data available to them.  They have descriptive data about their students in terms of their race/ethnicity, gender, grade level, free/reduced lunch status, ELL status, special education status; they also have data specifically related to given programs (e.g., for special education – their placement, their primary disability, the special education and related services they receive). Then they also have performance data, such as achievement level data on the state test and on district level tests and graduation and drop-out data.

The question is: How can we get district staff members to use all of these wonderful data?

What we do through the drill-down activity is merge all this data together and then generate reports so that districts can start to get a detailed picture of their students.

After all these reports are generated, we meet with district and school teams and walk them through their reports.  We then lead them through structured activities so that they can begin to identify patterns in their data, identify areas of strengths, and identify areas of concern.  Further, we provide additional drill-downs in real-time depending on where the data lead the teams.

Overview Materials

Activity Sheets

• Activity 2: What are the characteristics of your Student with Disabilities? What are their placements? What services do they receive?
• Activity 3: How did student perform on state test? (A Quick Look).
• Activity 4: How did students with disabilities perform on the state test?
• Activity 5: What is the Graduate Rate of Students with Disabilities?

Sample Reports