"How are we doing?" Middle School Data Collection and Goal Setting
Educators regularly collect data, but often fail to share it with the most relevant stakeholder group: students. The goal of this practice is to involve St. Louis Charter School middle school students in evaluating character education and setting goals based on these evaluations. The school has identified a number of specific pieces of data used to evaluate the character. Twice each trimester these pieces of data are collected. After collection, the entire middle school meets in the gym to review the results. After reviewing all of the data points together, students adjourn to their classrooms for a class meeting. Class meetings are held in multi-grade advisory classes and led by an advisory teacher. In advisory, students develop goals for the trimester based on the data. Mid-way through the trimester, the school evaluates how much progress students have made to that point. At the end of the trimester the school determines which goals were met and reasons of success and failure. The school then begin the process again, building up from the previous evaluation and results, for the next trimester.