Montgomery County,Maryland has made a large investment in technology to drive improvement of student achievement. Today's
Wall Street Journal describes how the comprehensive achievement data tracking system may become a national model.
Montgomery spends $47 million a year on technology like Edline. It is at the vanguard of what is known as the "data-driven" movement in U.S. education -- an approach that builds on the heavy testing of President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law. Using district-issued Palm Pilots, for instance, teachers can pull up detailed snapshots of each student's progress on tests and other measures of proficiency.
The high-tech strategy, which uses intensified assessments and the real-time collection of test scores, grades and other data to identify problems and speed up interventions, has just received a huge boost from President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
The Obama economic stimulus plan provides $100 billion for schools over the next two years, almost doubling the federal education budget. To qualify for much of the money, states will have to provide data showing progress in student achievement -- giving the edge to districts such as Montgomery that already have systems in place.
Because of the new incentives, systems similar to Montgomery's are expected to spread around the country. A look at the district's experience reveals the promise and potential pitfalls of the data-driven approach.
At the county school system's Office of Shared Accountability, 40 employees generate reports on such indicators as how many students take algebra in middle school or the SAT in high school. Principals, in turn, study schoolwide reports from the district's databanks to detect patterns of failing grades. Alerts of flagging performance come from Edline and another data-tracking system modeled after one used by the New York City police. The warnings, often sent via email, can spark immediate action, such as after-school tutoring, study sessions and meetings with families.
Not everyone is happy with the cost of the data system or the lack of attention to some students.
But a group called the Parents Coalition of Montgomery County questions the millions of dollars spent on technology. The group says the system's emphasis on closing the achievement gap between whites and minorities has shortchanged gifted students and those with disabilities. The parents also complain that the frequent use of standardized tests, beginning in grade school, stifles creativity and is crowding out the arts.
Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which has been a longtime critic of standardized assessments, echoes those concerns. He says school districts like Montgomery risk neglecting broader holistic measures of critical thinking that can't easily be tracked on a database. "Education is narrowed to little more than a test," he says.
District officials largely dismiss such criticisms and credit the system with a number of successes. For the past two years, almost 90% of kindergartners ended the year able to read a basic text proficiently on a standardized assessment, with only marginal differences among races and income groups. Seven years ago, just 52% of African-American students, 42% of Latinos, and 44% of low-income students reached that benchmark.
Montgomery has also succeeded in pushing more students to take rigorous AP classes, an important factor in admissions at selective colleges. A computer system, using scores on Preliminary SAT admissions tests, flags students, often minorities, who have academic gifts but aren't enrolled in challenging courses. Principals and teachers then encourage those children to sign up.
Over the past decade, the number of African-American students who achieved a passing or higher score on at least one AP test rose to 1,152 from 199. For Hispanic students, the figure increased to 1,336 from 218. The number of white and Asian-American students passing the exam rose, too, though not as dramatically.
Some evidence shows that progress on the achievement gap may dissipate over time. In eighth grade, about 90% of white and Asian students tested proficient or advanced in math on state tests, compared with only half of African-Americans and Hispanics. SAT scores of white and Asian-American students averaged more than 1700, compared with 1336 for African-Americans and 1401 for Hispanics.
Some teachers have expressed concerns about the time necessary to input and review data.
For five years, each Highland instructor has kept a "running record" of student results on reading assessments, either on a Palm Pilot or a paper checklist. Not all teachers, though, have embraced the system. Bonnie Cullison, president of the Montgomery County Education Association, the main teachers' union, estimates that such data-recording efforts add about three to four hours to teachers' weekly workloads. So far, 11 of 33 teachers at Highland have either left the system or are teaching in other Montgomery schools.
"This is a lot of hard work," says Principal Raymond Myrtle. "A lot of teachers don't want to do it. For those who don't like it, we suggested they do something else."
On a recent morning, fifth-grade teacher Robin Weber sat with a small group of students, showing them flashcards with vocabulary. "What's this word?" she asked Natalie Somkhoyai, 10, the child of Thai immigrants. "Essential," she said slowly. "Very good!" Ms. Weber said.
Based on Ms. Weber's data entries, Natalie was found to need extra help with reading comprehension, so she spent a period in the "intervention room" that afternoon with teacher Tracey Witthaus. There, Natalie and a small group of children read a passage about a forest fire at Yellowstone National Park. "I want you to summarize," Ms. Witthaus said -- why do people need to evacuate? Natalie had the answer: "There's too much smoke."
There are also questions regarding allocation of resources.
Other parents, meanwhile, have expressed concern that the data-driven system unfairly diverts resources from more middle-class "green" schools into the "red zone."
Parents Coalition member Heidi Dubin says her children's elementary classes in a green-zone school were too large and focused on meeting proficiency standards. She says her older daughter was advanced and could read Shakespeare in third grade, and was "learning nothing" in Montgomery schools. "You close the gap if the bottom comes up" -- but also if "the top comes down," says Ms. Dubin, a international tax-planning specialist.
Melissa Landa, a former Montgomery elementary-school teacher who is now a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, says "the amount of testing is really excessive" in Montgomery schools. "And if teachers aren't testing, they are preparing kids for testing." She believes that elementary-school children in the district should spend more time on projects and creative work and less time drilling.
School officials say the amount of testing isn't necessarily more than many other districts. The district contends that its ability to systematically track test results through its huge centralized databases helps to pace both students and teachers.
Gifted students, say school officials, have plenty of challenges, through extra work in class. The district says it is now spending more on special education, not less, because students receive extra supports in regular classrooms. Administrators also say they get few complaints from parents of children who get double doses of academic subjects. The district tries, when possible, to preserve electives such as art and music classes using an extended-day program.
I am a big fan of data and data analysis, but like any great tool, it can be misused or misunderstood. "Extra work" in class is not my idea of an appropriate instructional strategy for gifted students. (Do well in school and you get to shoulder twice the workload?) Appropriate service should feature instruction marked by differentiation of depth, breadth and pace of content. The work should be "different" not "extra."
So what do we think? Is this too much testing or not enough? Could the millions spent on data systems be better used elsewhere?
