Workshops on Data and Assessment Literacy for Leaders

Fifteen workshops covering the use of data by leaders when planning, interpreting assessment results, or evaluating your schools’ or district’s vital signs. Workshops are role-specific. Click below to see the workshops designed for each role.

2019-09-13T10:25:02-07:00

Accountability 101

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Accountability reporting fundamentals

Schools’ and districts’ reputations are rising and falling based on their accountability reports. Yet the skills required to do it effectively have not been codified and conveyed to those responsible for doing that work. You’ll learn how to do this effectively, and what a difference good reporting can make.

2019-09-13T10:25:09-07:00

Accountability 102

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Impact of accountability reporting

Enrollment and reputation of your schools and district are affected by accountability reports. Learn what happens to your accountability reports once they are published. Includes parent choice scenarios, and their search for facts that influence their decisions. Includes review of other sources of school information.

2019-09-13T10:25:27-07:00

Accountability 103

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Mismeasurement of schools’ and districts’ vital signs

Whether or not your school or district has landed in differentiated assistance, it’s time to review the limits of the Dashboard. We will review the roots of mismeasurement, and show you other approaches that enable you to see your school’s or district’s vital signs in a new light.

2019-09-13T10:25:34-07:00

Accountability 104

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Accountability reporting fundamentals

Schools’ reputations are rising and falling based on their accountability reports. These SARC reports are under your control. Is your team taking full advantage of this opportunity to tell your schools’ stories effectively? Learn what a difference good reporting can make.

2019-09-13T10:25:42-07:00

Accountability 105

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Mismeasurement of schools’ and districts’ vital signs

Whether or not your school or district has landed in differentiated assistance, it’s time to review the limits of the Dashboard. We will review the roots of mismeasurement, and show you other approaches that enable you to see your school’s or district’s vital signs in a new light.

2019-09-13T10:24:03-07:00

Assessment 101

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Interpreting assessments

Test results are uncertain, and human judgment is fallible. Yet, handling that uncertainty properly can improve the quality of human judgment. Learn the assessment fundamentals that will boost your team’s assessment IQ and help them make wiser decisions.

2019-09-13T10:24:10-07:00

Assessment 102

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Reporting assessment results

Assessment results are frequently misunderstood by everyone – staff, leaders and parents – and one culprit is poor quality reporting. Learn the do’s and don’ts of assessment reporting. Understand the roots of those misunderstandings. Discover how easy it can be to avoid these hazards.

2019-09-13T10:24:17-07:00

Assessment 201

Interpreting assessments of student results

Ambiguous evidence of student learning is the rule, not the exception. Yet you and your teachers must make decisions about student assignments based on this evidence. Learn how to tame that ambiguity, and make those tough decisions with the best quality evidence in hand.

2019-09-17T11:45:26-07:00

Assessment 202

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Interpreting assessments of school or district results

Planning requires a firm grasp of the soft meaning of test results. It also requires that the progress of the same students over time be measured. Learn how to make reasonable claims of the progress of student learning in your school or district. Smarter plans will be the result.

2019-09-13T10:23:09-07:00

Measurement 101

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Leading your district to measure wisely

Knowing what measurement skills each member of your cabinet should master is half the challenge. Knowing the right questions to ask them is the other half. We bring a retired superintendent and an analyst to this workshop.

2019-09-13T10:23:34-07:00

Measurement 102

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Telling data stories persuasively

Leaders who hold high quality evidence in hand still need to learn how to persuade others. There’s an art and a science to data story-telling. We’ll teach you how to do it, so you can tell memorable stories in front of any audience that are persuasive.

2019-09-13T10:23:43-07:00

Measurement 103

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Choosing the right analytic methods

Your staff needs more than a mantra to use “multiple measures.” They need to know how to use those measures, and what to do when those measures conflict. Gap analysis and year-to-year change measures require more than simple subtraction. Learn the right way to derive these key measures.

2019-09-13T10:24:34-07:00

Planning 101

Planning with evidence: school plans (SPSAs)

Good site plans depend upon sound evidence of schools’ strengths and challenges. We’ll review the quality of evidence and measurement methods used in site plans. And we’ll guide principals to become better judges of the quality of evidence they use, and better forecasters of outcomes.

2019-09-13T10:24:43-07:00

Planning 102

Planning with evidence: district plans (LCAPs)

District leaders can’t be expected to write smart LCAPs without sound evidence and solid methods. We’ll enable planning teams to become better judges of the quality of evidence they use, and better forecasters of outcomes. And we’ll help them avoid the risks of relying too much on faith when projecting improvements.

2019-09-13T10:24:53-07:00

Planning 103

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Planning with comparative visual evidence

When you see the vital signs of your district or school in the context of others whose students are very much like your own, you may be very surprised. Learn to see those vital signs with fresh eyes when you expand your visual vocabulary. See progress of test results redefined in a way that makes sense.

I want to learn more
“I consider our investment in your assessment consulting to be worth at least twenty times what it cost us…. Your reports provided powerful insights into the patterns of learning, and the barriers to learning, that we’d never seen before… Our principals are excited to have such specific pointers to action.”
Deb Kubin, Ex-superintendent of Willits USD

For Principals, District Leaders and Board Members

Principals

Your site leaders set the standard for data literacy and assessment savvy to their staff. And they depend upon those measurement skills when they write their site plans. We can teach them these skills, so they can write smarter plans, and share what they’ve learned with their staffs.

District leaders

Your assessment leader is going to be far more valuable if she can bring better interpretive support to principals. And assistant superintendents of Ed Services and C&I will become stronger planners and evaluators of programs if they command stronger quantitative and analytical skills.

Board members

They’ll be voting on plans and policies based on their understanding of what the numbers mean. After a board study session designed to boost their level of data literacy and assessment savvy, they’ll be better prepared to cast their vote where the evidence is most persuasive.

Tell us about your leaders’ measurement skills
“Our work with School Wise Press has helped us to deepen our skills for the reliable interpretation of data to best direct our limited resources in our Local Control Accountability Plan…. SWP brings great expertise to the planning and improvement process…”
Click to read Glen’s letter of reference
Glen Webb, Director of Assessment and Accountability, Morgan Hill USD

Instructors: Who is in Our Delivery Team

Everyone is a senior level expert. Their zones of expertise are complimentary. And their track records are evidence of leadership in their fields. We’ll bring two of our team to your district to deliver workshops that work. Move your mouse over their photos to learn more. Full curricula vitae are available on request.

Veteran educator of educators. Executive coach with boards, principals and superintendents.

Michael O’Neill
Psychometrician. Assessment advisor to principals and district leaders.

Howard Herl
Author, speaker, analyst, scholar. Has assessment director’s experience.

Jenny Rankin
National expert on the use of advanced and evidence-based practices to reduce inequity.

Stanley Pogrow
Retired school board member and past-president of CSBA.

Jill Wynns
Steve Rees bio photo
Founder, team leader, analyst and author of measurement curricula.

Steve Rees
Veteran educator of educators. Executive coach with boards, principals and superintendents.

Michael O’Neill

Michael O’Neill is an educator of educators, and the founder of the BridgeWorks Group, which since 1993 has provided support to education leaders through executive coaching, board workshops and strategic planning. He also provides guidance on curriculum and instruction to site leaders and teachers, with a focus on the Common Core transition. In the 1990s, he was a member of the faculty of the California School Leadership Academy. He earned his Ph.D in psychology at the Claremont Graduate School, and his administrative credentials at University of California, Irvine.

Psychometrician. Assessment advisor to principals and district leaders.

Howard Herl

Howard Herl is a psychometrician and founder of Evalumetrics, a firm serving close to 200 California school districts with reporting of students’ physical fitness tests. As a senior researcher at CRESST (the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing), he led teams in designing web-based assessment systems. At the Los Angeles County Office of Education, Howard created tools to help administrators understand and explain assessment data, providing services to 81 schools or districts over the course of five years. His experience in working directly with site leaders led him to be a rare psychometrician who is also skilled at bringing measurement of learning down to earth.

Author, speaker, analyst, scholar. Has assessment director’s experience.

Jenny Rankin

Jenny Grant Rankin is an author and educator centered on making proper sense of data and research. She has lectured at the University of Cambridge. Her Ph.D. in education specialized in School Improvement Leadership, and her research focused on the mismeasurement of student learning. She has written ten books and many articles and papers, developed the concept of over-the-counter data, and regularly presents at conferences. Previously, she was a teacher, assistant principal, and district administrator over assessment in Orange County. She was honored by the White House and served as Chief Education & Research Officer at Illuminate Education.

National expert on the use of advanced and evidence-based practices to reduce inequity.

Stanley Pogrow

Stanley Pogrow is a national expert on the use of advanced and evidence-based practices to reduce inequity, who teaches reform and quantitative methods to doctoral students at San Francisco State University’s Educational Leadership and Equity program. In the late 1980s, he developed and launched the widely adopted Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) project which was adopted by 2,600 schools in 48 states to help Title I and learning disabled students in grades 4-8. He is also an expert in the use of Design-Based and Improvement Science approaches to improving schools, and author of a textbook, Authentic Quantitative Analysis for Education Leadership Decision-Making and EDD Dissertations (2018).

Retired school board member and past-president of CSBA.

Jill Wynns

Jill is a distinguished leader in the work of district governance, having served as a trustee of San Francisco USD for 23 years. During that time, she became a leader in the California School Boards Association, and in 2012 was elected president. Among the education organizations that have benefited from her guiding hand are the National School Boards Action Center Board; the California Cities, Counties and Schools Partnership, and the Council of Urban Boards of Education of NSBA. Her areas of expertise include school finance, urban education and governance, full-service community schools, charter schools, school health programs, healthy school food, and labor-management cooperation.

Founder, team leader, analyst and author of measurement curricula.

Steve Rees

When Steve started School Wise Press in 1995, he was moved to help parents make sense of schools’ vital signs. He brought a level of professionalism to interpreting and visualizing education data that drew on his 18 years in magazine publishing. In 14 years, the company he built helped over 240 district leaders tell their schools’ stories. In 2009, he launched an assessment consultancy, the Owl Corps. And in 2013, his team turned toward helping district and school leaders build evidence from data to improve their ability to plan and manage more wisely. Since 2016, he has enjoyed writing curricula and building a professional development team to teach the measurement skills he has spent two decades developing.

Three of us have shared our views in video about why we enjoy building the capacity of leaders to measure what matters.

Here’s why we love this work.

Howard Herl

Michael O’Neill

Steve Rees

“Based on their work with our Napa CoE Professional Learning Network, I would recommend Steve and Michael’s expert services for any state, county or school district aiming to build their teams’ capacity for data analysis … very useful for developing growth goals for the new LCAP cycle…” Click to read Lucy’s letter of reference.
Lucy Edwards, Director of Continuous Improvement and Academic Support, Napa CoE

6 Skills Your Team Will Gain

Measuring the progress of learning

Knowing your students’ scores is child’s play. Knowing what progress they made is a riddle for adults, one that we’re ready to help you solve. You’ll learn how to untangle the misunderstandings that surround progress metrics, and communicate them clearly to others.

Accounting for uncertainty

Measuring the progress of learning requires knowing the degree of imprecision inherent in the data. We’ll show you how much that can matter, and how easy it is to draw the right conclusions by taking that into account at the student, school and district levels.

Forecasting more accurately

Your LCAP and SPSA planning teams are estimating what will happen in a year or two or three. All too often, they create plans based more on faith than on science. They’ll learn visual methods of summarizing evidence, so they can deliver more credible forecasts.

Comparing more fairly

See how your district and schools compare to others whose students are very similar to your own. Your team will build these similarity sets, and then analyze your schools’ and district’s strengths and challenges in a fairer, more relevant context.

Communicating data as human stories

Once you make sense of your numbers and make a decision, you need to persuade others that your decisions deserve their support. We’ll show you how to turn your evidence into human stories that are memorable, emotional and persuasive.

Interpreting with visual analytics

Few people can use statistical methods to squeeze the right meaning from data. But if that data is structured and visualized properly, the patterns become visible. Your team will learn how to read those patterns, filter out the “noise,” and discover the real meaning those patterns reveal.

Tell us about the skills you want to build
“For the past 20 years, Michael O’Neill has played a major role in my career as Superintendent of Schools and Executive Coach. We have worked together with school board members, administrators, and teachers in small, medium, and large urban school districts.”
Dr. Gloria Johnston, Retired Superintendent, Banning and West Contra Costa USDs

Gallery of Resources

Example of our instructional materials

Why superintendents see test results differently than principals and teachers.

We wrote and produced this animation to spark discussion in our workshops. It contrasts the use of test results to compare schools, with the use of test results to infer the progress of students. Accountability conversations and instructional talks require different metrics.
Different perspectives on progress can lead to a lot of confusion between district leaders and principals. This video shows how much information about student results gets lost when averages and cut-score measures are bandied about, without showing the variation of individual students’ results.

Video examples of our delivery team in action

Here are three live examples, which we videotaped from our workshop on assessment fundamentals with principals at Morgan Hill USD in October 2018. Each video is under 90 seconds in length.

Howard Herl

Michael O’Neill

Steve Rees

Learning objectives: Master Standards for Data Use

We are building the knowledge and skills of your team, aiming to meet the Master Standards for Data Use. Education leaders have a role-based version, and data leads have another. These were drafted in 2015 and 2016 by a multi-state consortium, under the auspices of the Institute for Education Science.

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