How Did that Happen? Teachers’ Explanations for Low Test Scores

Abstract

Context Educators often engage with student performance data to make important instructional decisions, yet limited research has analyzed how educators make sense of student performance data. In addition, scholars suggest that teachers recognize a relationship between their instruction and student performance data, but this is a relatively untested assumption. Focus of Study We investigated if and how teachers referenced instruction as a contributing factor for why students performed in particular ways on assessments. We also studied other explanations that teachers offered for student performance data. Research Design Our research team conducted a qualitative case study of six grade-level teams of teachers who met biweekly to make meaning of student performance data. Using data collected from 44 hours of observation of teacher team meetings, 16 individual interviews, and six group interviews with participating teachers, we analyzed the ways in which and the extent to which teachers referenced instruction as a contributing factor to student performance data. Findings: Teachers connected student performance data to their instruction approximately 15% of the time. Teachers more frequently connected student performance data to student characteristics. Notably, student behavior accounted for 32% of all teacher explanations for student performance. We offer five distinct categories of teachers’ explanations of student performance and the extent to which teachers invoked each category. Conclusions The findings in this study build on research on teachers’ attributions for assessment data. In contrast to other studies, our findings suggest that teachers invoked student characteristics in distinct ways when explaining student performance. At times, teachers were knowledgeable about student characteristics, which offered verifiable insights into the “problem” of low achievement. At other times, teachers voiced negative viewpoints of students that served to blame students for their poor performance. We suggest that the practice of data-driven decision making offers an opportunity to bolster educators’ informed judgment and undermine negative, unverifiable claims about children.

Does Teacher Data Use Lead to Improved Student Achievement? A Review of the Empirical Evidence

“…They make these assertions because implicit biases, deficit thinking, and low expectations influence the ways teachers use data (Bertrand & Marsh, 2015;Park, 2018). For example, in studies accounting for teachers' attributions or explanations for poor performance during data use, teachers regularly pointed to stable student characteristics, such as race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, as the cause for undesired outcomes (Bertrand & Marsh, 2015;Evans et al, 2019;Nabors Oláh et al, 2010). As a result, teachers became less motivated to find other causes for low achievement, and were less likely to interrogate their practice or change their instruction in response to low achievement (Bertrand & Marsh, 2015;Diamond, 2008;Schildkamp & Kuiper, 2010).…”

Identity-Blind Intervention: Examining Teachers’ Attention to Social Identity in the Context of Response to Intervention

“…Inexperienced teachers who have minimal support from underfunded school districts (Mirra & Rogers, 2016) are particularly at risk of delivering ineffective instruction to students. Such ineffective instruction may include the use of student characteristics (e.g., English learner) to explain students' low performance on assessments (Evans et al, 2019), instructional materials that fail to affirm diverse student identities and experiences (Thornhill, 2016), and the development of negative classroom climates that do not promote the sense of safety that is conducive to learning (Lacoe, 2016). These practices place diverse urban students at greater risk for failing to master grade-level standards, potentially leading to invalid referrals for special education evaluation-particularly when teachers overlook their own role in creating and perpetuating students' academic "struggles."…”

Centering student voice as a foundation of systems-level transformative leadership

“…Educators must embrace the possibility of change and transformation in order to avoid co-opting student voice efforts (Fielding, 2004), use it for compliance to policy (Mitra, 2018), or to make the data look good (Rudduck, 2006;Fielding, 2004). The educator must embrace the change, yet the blame or need for change is often put on the students (Evans, et al, 2019).…”