It's Not Just Our Data

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of going over to our high school and doing a small presentation on analyzing data in a PLC.  According to the data I have gathered this year about PLC practices, it seems that there is a need for a protocol for data analysis when looking at common assessment data.  You can view the presentation below and the handouts used here.   In the presentation, I made a point of making sure assessments were aligned to learning objectives so usable data could be gathered.  But I also had teachers try and analyze overall percentages rather than assessment data broken down by learning objective to see what students knew or didn't know; they quickly deduced that overall percents weren't good data from which to draw valid inferences regarding student learning.  
But isn't that the data we give students most often?  Overall percents, letter grades, number incorrect; isn't that the data we usually toss at students and then expect them to magically do better because we gave it to them?  I think we have to remember that data about student learning isn't just ours, it's our students' data as well.  Students need to be able to draw valid inferences about their learning from data too: what they know and can do and what they don't know and can't do.  And then we need to teach them how to act on that data and fix what they don't know and can't do so they can actually learn how to be those lifelong learners that are bandied about in so many school mission statements.  
It's not just our data that needs to be usable - students need usable data as well in order to improve their learning.