A Toolkit for Student Success
How STEM Prep Used Data to Improve Student Mastery
By: Kelley Prosser, Marco Castaneda, Stephanie Lassalle
Continuous Improvement methods harness the power of data to make dramatic gains for students. An example of this power occurred at Crown Prep Academy, STEM Prep’s 5–8 school in Los Angeles. Math teachers doubled the percentage of students with disabilities getting As and Bs in their classes by making data easier to access and empowering their teachers with the tools to regularly support students through personalized interventions.
These results help STEM Prep, which serves 1,300 students across three schools, get closer to their school-wide goals to increase student proficiency in math and further their mission to disrupt inequitable access to STEM opportunities.
How did they do it? Read Crown Prep’s story.
A Gradebook Toolkit
The team at Crown noticed a challenge: the end of semester rush to support students in completing classwork was primarily focused on raising grades, rather than mastery of content.
The team, led by Principal Danny Moreno, decided to try something different: they hypothesized that by regularly reviewing student grades, they could avoid the rush to raise grades at the end of the term. Frequent use of data, they thought, would allow teachers to reflect on student progress and barriers and to set monthly goals for themselves — goals that would ensure early, personalized intervention to improve mastery of important skills and content.
To start, STEM Prep leaders — including Moreno and Logan Barnes, the data lead for the improvement project — developed a gradebook toolkit for adoption across the teaching staff.
“We wanted to ensure that teachers had a tool that would help them gain insight on how their students were performing in their class and reflect on ways to improve outcomes for students,” said Moreno.
The toolkit they developed allowed teachers to monitor student progress toward learning goals, and to use that data to offer personalized interventions to support students in-the-moment (as opposed to all at once, at the end of a term).
Teachers download a report from PowerSchool (PS), STEM Prep’s student information system, containing grades on student work. This report then feeds into a spreadsheet that aggregates student grades by learning goal, period of time, and sub-group, such as students with disabilities or English language learners. A dashboard overview for teachers highlights how grades are distributed overall and how students are performing on average against specific learning targets.
With the use of the Gradebook Toolkit, teachers can now more easily identify the students who are at risk of not passing classes, quickly create short-term SMART goals focused on mastery of content, and immediately develop an intervention plan based on each student’s needs. For example, teachers can use this information to determine small-group workshops, or invite students to join after-school tutoring.
The magic to this process is how often teachers are using this tool. When teachers run the PS report at scheduled intervals and feed it into the spreadsheet, they can see if previously identified students have met their SMART goals, or whether different action plans are necessary.
This approach allows teachers to see and celebrate progress with students on rapid cycles: students don’t have to wait months to see whether their hard work is paying off, and teachers can replicate the instructional practices and interventions that yielded the greatest gains.
A Culture of Learning
When first implemented, the toolkit and protocol were a flop. The tools were presented as a system teachers would use, but teachers didn’t fully understand why they were needed. Teachers said that the tool was difficult to understand and navigate. Subsequently, adoption was poor, and the effort failed.
However, because of Crown’s culture of continuous improvement, the team was undeterred. Continuous improvement is a successful improvement method because it enables rapid learning, allowing teams to adapt an approach rather than scrapping it. So Moreno, Barnes, and Crown Assistant Principal Kate Bucci adjusted, using feedback from teachers to improve the tool.
Next, they created professional development that used a thermometer/thermostat mental model to provide the explicit rationale behind the toolkit. PowerSchool, they explained, is the thermometer; it shows the current temperature of student performance. The toolkit would be the thermostat, enabling teachers to change that temperature through focused action.
The training landed well with teachers, who were then able to connect the effort to Crown Prep’s goals for student performance — specifically, increasing A and B grades, as well as passing grades generally.
“Being transparent and explicit about our school-wide goals,” said Bucci, “helped teachers to see the bigger picture and empowered them to create more targeted and clear goals for their subgroups.”
With teacher buy-in on track, Bucci reviewed the initial action plans. She found that they were primarily student-centered (i.e., “the student needs to …”) rather than teacher-centered (i.e., “I will … for the student.”). Again, the team adjusted based on what they’d learned. They created a tool to develop action plans with each data pull. The tool provided guiding questions to focus the teacher’s attention on who is struggling, what they’re struggling with, and what actions the teacher would take to support the student.
From the start, scheduled data pulls and discussion were built into the PD calendar, which proved essential to the success of the effort. Teachers shared their goals for students with their coaches and administrators to inform PD and coaching sessions, where they could get feedback on their approach and progress. Coaches could also use the data and guiding questions to reinforce the protocol by asking questions like, “How can I help you action plan?” Repetition made the practice routine.
Making the Grade
Students’ mastery of content improved tremendously. In the first semester of the 2021–22 school year, among the 120 students with disabilities served, the percentage of A&B grades increased from 32% to 73%, and the percentage of “Not Proficient” grades went from 19% to 0%.
Data from the effort also provides reinforcement for the idea that by focusing on students placed furthest from opportunity, the experience of all students is improved. Among students at Crown who do not have disabilities, A&B grades improved from 49% to 77% and “Not Proficient” grades fell from 20% to 2%.
In addition, the protocol has empowered teachers. Teachers are pulling data up regularly — on their own, between PD sessions — to consider what is working well and what is not.
“If the goal was successful I am able to maintain the strategy, whereas if the goal was unsuccessful I use a different strategy to monitor progress,” said Crown teacher Matthew Aguirre. “This process is continuous and I am able to come to the professional developments already thinking about what steps I want to take next and what needs to be adjusted.”
The toolkit and protocol give teachers a shared structure and routine for reflecting on data and planning actions for student impact. Teachers know they have support from Moreno and Barnes for using the tools, and their feedback matters to the tools’ development.
Altogether, Crown’s approach — using the gradebook toolkit and rapid cycles of data-driven intervention — presents a model for ensuring that no students are left behind. This rapid personalized intervention cycle also ensures that there are no mad rushes at the end of a semester, since teachers are supporting students week-to-week and month-to-month, not semester-to-semester.
Given the success of the STEM Prep improvement team and the promise this work holds for Black and Latinx students with disabilities experiencing poverty, Marshall is working with STEM Prep to illuminate this work for others. Marshall improvement advisors will continue to support improvement cycles at STEM Prep and share the team’s learning with the education community.
This story was co-authored with Marshall Street’s Networked Improvement Community (NIC) team, including Kelley Prosser, Marco Castaneda and Stephanie Lassalle . Learn more about Marshall Street’s work in Continuous Improvement at marshall.org.
Continuous Improvement is a set of principles and practices to help educators “get better at getting better.” Marshall’s Continuous Improvement team uses these tools to tackle intricate, systems-level problems in K-12 education. Currently, we support a multi-year Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to make dramatic gains for Black and Latinx students with disabilities experiencing poverty.
