Trust: The Foundation Of Student Achievement
When sharing with me the results of some tests, my doctor once said, "You are a scientist, you know a single piece of data can't provide all the answers or suffice to make a diagnosis. We can't look at a single number in isolation, we need to look at all results in combination." Was my doctor suggesting that I ignore that piece of information we had? No. Was my doctor deemphasizing the result? No. He simply said that we needed additional evidence to make informed decisions. This is, of course, correct.
In education, however, it is frequently implied or even stated directly that the bottom line when it comes to school performance is student test scores, whereas any other outcomes, such as cooperation between staff or a supportive learning environment, are ultimately "soft" and, at best, of secondary importance. This test-based, individual-focused position is viewed as serious, rigorous, and data driven. Deviation from it -- e.g., equal emphasis on additional, systemic aspects of schools and the people in them -- is sometimes derided as an evidence-free mindset. Now, granted, few people are “purely” in one camp or the other. Most probably see themselves as pragmatists, and, as such, somewhere in between: Test scores are probably not all that matters, but since the rest seems so difficult to measure, we might as well focus on "hard data" and hope for the best.
Why this narrow focus on individual measures such as student test scores or teacher quality? I am sure there are many reasons but one is probably lack of familiarity with the growing research showing that we must go beyond the individual teacher and student and examine the social-organizational aspects of schools, which are associated (most likely causally) with student achievement. In other words, all the factors skeptics and pragmatists might think are a distraction and/or a luxury, are actually relevant for the one thing we all care about: Student achievement. Moreover, increasing focus on these factors might actually help us understand what’s really important: Not simply whether testing results went up or down, but why or why not.
For the past ten months we've been highlighting this body of research in “the social side of education”series. This has been an uphill battle for a variety of reasons: 1) the research in this area seems less likely to be picked up by the popular media; 2) the research is in a variety of different disciplines and employs different approaches within disciplines, which requires a lot of synthesizing work; and 3) in order to pay attention to this evidence (let alone be persuaded by it), a mind shift is necessary. We are so used to thinking about individual, rational actors who respond to incentives and disincentives that it's just hard to imagine anything else.
But there is some indication -- or at least I am hopeful -- that our collective ability to view school performance and improvement more broadly, and in a more complex way, is expanding. For one, many Trust: The Foundation Of Student Achievement | Shanker Institute:
