nothin School Board Dumps Data Consultant | New Haven Independent

School Board Dumps Data Consultant

Christopher Peak Photo

Ed Joyner: Didn’t you go over this in grad school?

Tamiko Jackson-McArthur: What do these numbers tell us?

School board members voted to redirect $144,000 away from a series of data-analysis trainings and possibly put the money into instructional supports, pushing back against the superintendent.

The Board of Education has debated for the past month whether to move ahead on a $144,000 contract with Harvard University’s Data Wise program, which would train administrators and principals throughout New Haven to identify and solve their problems with data. The money would have come from state Alliance Grant” funds.

On Tuesday night, at a special meeting at Celentano School, they made their final decision, as four board members voted the contract down. Board members argued that the district didn’t have enough data analysts to make an in-depth training worthwhile. They suggested that Central Office administrators with graduate degrees could cover the basics on their own.

Darnell Goldson, Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, Ed Joyner and Jamell Cotto all voted against approving the Data Wise contract, while Mayor Toni Harp abstained.

The board tasked Superintendent Carol Birks with figuring out another state-approved use for the $144,000 in Alliance Grant funds. Generally, that money is are restricted to new programs that would build out pipelines of talent, train educators or support high-needs students in academics, improve the feeling inside schools or invest in technology and school operations.

Carol Birks, Ivelise Velazquez and Michelle Sherban answer data questions.

Data Wise’s copyrighted eight-step protocol was first developed in 2006 to help Boston teachers figure out how to comprehend annual state assessments, and it was implemented more recently in Hartford.

Birks’s former boss, Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez, who promoted her to Hartford’s chief of staff in 2017, is the only coach whom Harvard has certified to teach Data Wise in the state.

Several board members said they just didn’t see the need for a data consultant at this point.

Two weeks ago, Mayor Toni Harp questioned the need for Data Wise. She asked if it made sense to offer trainings when the district had no Central Office staff reviewing its stats.

Superintendent Birks responded on Tuesday night that the district is close to hiring a full-time data analyst, paid for with Alliance funds.

But other opposition had fomented since then, especially from Joyner, who’d initially been open to contract.

The people we pay can’t identify the data they need? It’s something I learned in grad school,” he said. I don’t understand why anyone who has a six-year in education does not understand research in schools. If you have a doctorate in education, you should know that there’s nothing special in Data Wise.”

Tamiko Jackson-McArthur: What do these numbers tell us?

Just before taking that vote, the school board members got their own lesson in how data’s currently used within the district. They sat through two number-heavy slideshows — until Jackson-McArthur halted them midway through. She said some of the stats felt like a brick wall that stopped me in my tracks,” while administrators had clicked right through.

For instance, Jackson-McArthur pointed to two slides showing that 57 percent of third-graders are falling behind on how quickly they’re catching up to grade level in reading and showing that 32 percent of Hillhouse High School freshmen had failed their algebra class.

Jackson-McArthur said those two data points raised big issues, but she said the numbers didn’t explain much themselves. She said they didn’t explain exactly what had gone wrong nor how administrators planned to right it.

We should not move that quickly beyond that without saying what happened here,” Jackson-McArthur said. I would appreciate this more … along with a plan or interventions that are in place. We should know what’s happening.”

Jamell Cotto and Darnell Goldson: Find another use for the money.

Goldson too said he felt that the presentations needed more context. Birks responded that she was just trying to get through” without keeping the board members too late. Goldson suggested that she should make the presentations available before the meeting to have a more focused discussion.

We don’t need to go through all the information at the meeting,” Goldson said. The presentation, all it does is give us the numbers; it doesn’t tell us what it means and where we’re going with this stuff.”

Even though the achievement numbers didn’t tell them much, school board members referenced them again later on Tuesday night. Right as they voted the Data Wise contract down, Cotto said that the grant might be better spent on reading supports. Or math, Joyner added.

Goldson, the board’s president, said Birks should offer ideas for how she’d like to reappropriate the $144,000 at the board’s next meeting.

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