The Power of Data: Making Data Useable and Relevant to Drive School Achievement

Thursday February 8, 2018
1:30 - 3:00 PM
Room 121

In order to build the right support structures for students and schools, we need timely, accurate, and useable data, and need to pair that with the know-how to make the data actionable and to monitor progress over time. Led by Diplomas Now, a collaboration of three national nonprofits - Johns Hopkins University's Talent Development Secondary, City Year and Communities In Schools - This session will focus on how to effectively use data through activities designed to help participants interpret and make student support decisions based on real-time data and building-level data trends. During this workshop, participants will take part in a mock “Early Warning Indicator (EWI) Meeting,” which provides the opportunity to understand the types of data that helps identify students who need additional support, and work together to find the best solutions for each student. This process, through a recent national study, has been proven to decrease the number of EWIs among at-risk students.

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Presenters
Kathy Nelson

Kathy Nelson is a creative and organized educator with more than fifteen years of large scale, whole school turnaround experience in urban public education. She is currently the Deputy Director for Diplomas Now – a national dropout prevention program - at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to that she was the Director of Implementation for the Talent Development Middle Grades programs at Johns Hopkins University, where she directed all outreach and implementation efforts for the program. She was Program Director at UCLA’s School Management Program, which provided executive management training to K-12 practitioners & administrators in the Los Angeles Unified School District implementing whole-school change. Nelson has been a consultant to districts developing K-12 content and performance standards. As well as strong management experience, she has done considerable work in curriculum design – specifically Social Studies programs for secondary students and K-12 practitioners throughout the US and Pacific Island nations. Nelson co-authored American Indian Citizenship in Balance - a curriculum unit on the concept of dual citizenship as it applies to American Indian, and currently being used in social studies classrooms in 104 Bureau of Indian Affairs high schools. She was awarded a Taft Fellowship to study American Indian Politics at the University of Montana. (Taft Teacher Institute, New York) Nelson has been a teacher of middle and high school Social Studies and English in California, Utah, Switzerland, and Maryland.

Laura Weeldreyer

Laura Weeldreyer is the Chief Program Officer for Talent Development Secondary at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and a Senior Fellow with the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. Previously, Weeldreyer worked nationally on a variety of education reform projects with school systems, state departments of education, and non-profit organizations, as a senior consultant for a public sector management consulting firm. Her recent projects include the design and implementation of new systems for principal and teacher evaluation with Race to the Top states, support for the implementation of performance management routines in turnaround schools in the state of Virginia, the development of a collaborative performance framework for school accountability and support in Shelby County, Tennessee, and the use of data and performance management to support innovation and improvement with educator preparation programs. Weeldreyer is also a member of the Maryland State Board of Education. Previously Weeldreyer worked in the central office of the Baltimore City Public School System for eleven years. During her time with City Schools, she held several positions, including Deputy Chief of Staff and oversaw major systemic reform initiatives. She was an Area Executive Officer for 32 schools that spanned pre-k through 12th grade. Weeldreyer also served as the Executive Director the Office of New and Charter Schools, facilitating and supporting the opening of more than 20 new public schools, and overseeing the charter school application and renewal process for Baltimore. Weeldreyer taught elementary and middle school in New Orleans and Baltimore. She was a Teach for America corps member. Weeldreyer went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her BA and she holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Baltimore. Weeldreyer is the author of several books for children.

type:
Workshop
theme:
instruction
audience:
classroom leaders
topics:
using data, program collaboration & coordination