Accountability Needs Narrative More Than Numbers
Numbers don't gain leverage over schools unless they lead to knowledgeable action. Data that schools can respond to are often contained in the story or narrative that a school tells about itself. Sometimes these stories are accurate, sometimes they are aspirational, and sometimes they are romantic fantasies. Regardless, the convergence of narrative and numbers builds local capacity for improvement.
"At the local level, the key is to get information that people will act on and more importantly will tell a story about your school," says University of Oregon professor David Conley who has advised the California State School Board. The numerical data that educators need are likely to be different than the data the state collects for the dashboard reports that are replacing single-number indicators.
Take attendance information, for example. Keeping track of attendance is one of California's eight state indicators, but average attendance levels don't tell a school how to improve. A more actionable place to start is the names of students who are chronically absent. "If a student is piling up absences in the first ten weeks of the 9th grade, it's pretty clear that they won't graduate," Conley said in a recent interview.
So, a school needs more fine-grained numbers and rapid feedback about attendance. It needs to connect those numbers with its narrative about school improvement. A statement such as, "we support 9th graders in their transition to high school and closely monitor their progress" links action and outcomes. Action on attendance and other process variables strongly influences outcomes, such as graduation rates, dropouts, and the success of career and technical education students in workplace experience.
"Not everything is a number," notes Jon Snyder, executive director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE), which is designing and advocating for multiple measure accountability systems.
The merger of numbers and narrative is emerging in several California school districts as a product Accountability Needs Narrative More Than Numbers - On California - Education Week:
