Data Collection

All special education teachers collect data.  It’s a federal mandate.  However, I’ve visited a few classrooms here and there, and when I ask them how they track their data (specifically, behavioral data) I never get a straight answer.

“Hm, well, see, I write these things down on these sheets and I save them in this folder here, see?  And I also collect these point sheets every day and then I know, see?”

Data collection shouldn’t be guesswork.  Behavioral data, like reading or math data, should be concrete and quantifiable.

I collect point sheets from students each day.  The point sheets are generic; that is, each student gets the same one.  But they’re split up into multiple categories that cover most any behavior.  For each category (in each class) they can score 0, 1, or 2.  My instructional assistant then plugs the totals for each behavior into a spreadsheet that’s split up into into 9 months and individual students.  When it’s time to send out progress reports, I call upon Excel to perform its magic.  It spits out percentages for each month.  I then create pretty charts (again in Excel) to give parents a visual picture of their child’s behaviors throughout the year.

What’s your system?