Data Analysis in Administrators' Hands: An Oxymoron? - an argument for the use of statistical data, rather than intuition, in school administration

School Administrator, April, 2001 by Theodore B. Creighton

Statistical strategies, not gut feelings, form the hallmark of good instructional decisions

For too long, many school leaders have made decisions about instructional leadership with intuition and by "shooting from the hip." All too often, the decision-making process fails to include data collection and data analysis.

During my many years as a principal and district superintendent, I often questioned the enormous amount of time we spent collecting numbers. Each morning from 30 to 40 minutes was spent in gathering and reporting attendance. The annual state-mandated testing procedure began in early October and seemed to exist in one form or another for the entire year. We collected our test scores, filed them in the office and seldom used them again.

School districts everywhere collect and maintain many forms of student data. Standardized test scores, average daily attendance figures and transcript data are required by states for funding purposes. However, most schools collect these data to satisfy administrative requirements rather than to assess and evaluate school or student improvement. Standardized test scores generally are reviewed only briefly before the local newspaper calls. Average daily attendance is reported to state education agencies, then filed away.

Educators rarely examine these data in a systematic way to assess the quality of teaching and learning at their school. Of course, this presupposes that superintendents, central-office administrators and principals have an understanding of data analysis and ways to use this analysis to improve teaching and learning.

Misuderstood Notions

Few things are more feared than the thought of statistical analysis. To most educators, statistics means endless calculations and memorization of formulas, Statistics is seen by most as a formal domain of advanced mathematics, represented by a course or two taught by graduate school professors trying to make a student's life as painful as possible. Courses in statistical methods are usually taught with formal proofs of mathematical theorems and the derivation of statistical formulas as a main focus.

The educator's fear of statistics likely stems from a variety of factors, but principal and teacher preparation programs must accept the fact that the presentation of statistics in education probably lacks four important components.

First, instruction on statistics does not emphasize the relevance of data to the day-to-day lives of principals and teachers. Second, it does not fully integrate current technology into the teaching and learning of statistics. Third, few (if any) statistics courses are designed for students enrolled in educational leadership or teacher education programs.

Finally, many statistics courses taught in colleges of education focus a major part of time on inferential statistics as a tool in conducting research projects and dissertations. Far less time is spent on statistical strategies that might help the principal or superintendent improve his or her skills in problem analysis, program and student evaluation, data-based decision making and report preparation.

Trouble Spots

* Lack of Relevance.

Traditional courses in statistics elicit the frequent student query: "When will I ever use this stuff?" And rightfully so, as our research indicates most classes at the college level are taught as a hardcore mathematics course devoid of powerful and practical applications relevant to school administration and student learning.

We seem to realize the importance of relevance in courses on the principalship and instructional supervision, but we have been slow to add the same practical connections to our statistics and research courses. Unless this change is made, we will continue to face high levels of anxiety in our principal preparation programs.

* Integration of Recent Technology.

The advance of technology and the large selection of user-friendly computer software can assist us as we move toward a more practical and relevant presentation of statistics for educators. Several good statistical packages exist. These include GB STAT and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, better known as SPSS. Better yet, we can use Microsoft Excel to perform our data analysis. All are easy-to-use, menu-driven statistical programs applicable for analyzing student standardized test scores, attendance and dropout data, college entrance requirements, etc.

These common software programs can tabulate the number of males and females in a school, calculate average grades of students, compare test scores by gender, determine if there is a statistically significant difference between achievement of athletes and non-athletes, compare computer-assisted instruction with other methods of delivery, and test the effectiveness of whole language versus phonics instruction.

* Statistical Analysis Designed for Educators.

Again, many courses concentrate on psychology, sociology and other social sciences with little mention of ways that statistical analysis can assist school leaders in their day-to-day decisions. We need to work with data collected from real classrooms, focusing on student instruction and assessment, attendance and dropout rates, college entrance tests and instructional program evaluations.