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Student Data Use SURVEY Now OPEN!!! Please help us make this a better wiki!
"What is not started today is never finished tomorrow." Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

=Student Data Folders for Secondary Education= Our originial goal was to use data, not only to drive instructional practice as we were learning to implement our Professional Learning Communities, but also to motivate our students. Using Student Data Folders (SDF) is not new. Usually when a school adopts a new program information is available from a variety of sources including the Internet. This was not the case with SDFs, especially at the secondary level. Research supporting the use of data, goals as a motivational tool, learning targets and descriptive feedback is available. Our SDFs incorporate all of these research-based strategies. Today, our objective it to first focus on teachers to use data to make instructional decisions, design units which take into account the various learning levels and learning curves of each child, and to teach the whole child. SDF are used in pockets throughout our district. We've seen that when students create their own goals and then track their progress, we see movement. Students want to succeed. We want to help them be successful. So our original message...

Students need to know what they're learning, how they learn best and where they are going. This knowledge empowers students to achieve at their highest level.

This wiki is meant for teachers who are using SDFs or who want to explore using them. Click on the SDF RESOURCES page for links to outside resources including articles. These sites offer some great templates too! Lessons that were created for use in our schools will be available soon. Some of us had previously taught SMART goals as part of our curriculas and decided that SMART goals would work well with SDFs. For more information on SMART Goals and more click on that page. The Plan, Do, Study, Act page provides background information on what we've done, how we implemented, challenges we've faced (including remedies) and strengths that we've built upon. The __We are__ page provides information about the principal participants in the project.

=What we know from our experiences=
 * Students tend to study what they like the best and avoid things they do not like
 * Students will set goals and create action plans to obtain them
 * Students do want to succeed
 * For SDFs to work successfully they must be implemented with integrity.
 * The work doesn't need to be a whole school effort - but it helps.

=Who are we?= We are a group of teachers who implemented SDF in one middle school and two high schools in the 2009-10 school year. Please review the **@Study, Plan, Act...** page for our experiences and reflections on the process. This page outlines our efforts to implement SDFs, strengths, weaknesses and thoughts which led to new strategies. The process is not perfect and continues to evolve.

As of fall of 2012, data is being used in new and exciting ways to change instructional practice and to motive and engage students in their owning learning. Each school in our district now has a Data Facilitator (some are part time and serve multiple schools). Even our high schools now all have a full time DF to serve them. The data that we use is constantly changing. In the upcoming weeks, I will update the progress.

Continue to check back often.