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At Oxnard School District, we are dedicated to empowering all children to achieve excellence. In fulfilling that promise to our 16,000 students across 20 schools, we partner with Panorama to administer social-emotional learning surveys and as our counselors’ primary platform for student supports and interventions.
An important priority for many districts this fall—Oxnard included—will be to support the whole child by collecting and analyzing data to better understand student's SEL skills.
In order to effectively engage in data-driven decision-making around SEL supports, our district team (including myself as the director of pupil services) has been very intentional about how we review, synthesize, and action plan with data for our support staff.
During Panorama’s recent virtual meetup for California school district leaders, I shared my experience leading with transparency and using asset-based thinking when it comes to exploring SEL data and creating SEL intervention groups.
Watch The Full Presentation Below
Modeling Data-Informed SEL Practices in Oxnard
In our district, our goal is to use data to inform our decision-making regarding SEL supports for students.
As a district leader, I can’t simply speak this into existence. Part of my plan is to model the cognitive process of walking our staff through a “deep data dive” using the Panorama Student Success platform.
I do this because I recognize that not everybody may feel comfortable diving into data. Just because I may be thinking, “All right, I am ready for a data dive!” does not mean that my staff are ready to jump in.
Let me walk you through my 8-step process for modeling data-driven decision-making with my staff.
"We must use data to inform our decision-making regarding SEL supports for students."
Before We Begin: Muffin Has Fallen
In the current crisis of COVID-19 and reckoning for structural racism, I’m recognizing that we are in unique times. Suddenly, we feel like things are entirely different. A muffin has fallen upon our car.
I often joke about this, but we know that muffins do fall from the sky. A muffin fell on my first day as an assistant principal when my mother called to inform me that my grandmother had passed away. Sudden circumstances, disasters, and difficulties for the adults and the children in our districts occur all the time.
Our children come to us with all kinds of challenges that may not necessarily be visible for us—but they are very much a part of their reality. That's what Panorama gives us an opportunity to do—dig below the surface just a little bit. We can do that for both our children and for our adults.
"That's what Panorama gives us an opportunity to do—dig below the surface just a little bit. We can do that for both our children and for our adults."
My 8-Step "Data Deep Dive" in Panorama Student Success
1. Transparency
Whenever examining data from across the district, leading with transparency is key.
I always start by sharing district-level data, which looks at Panorama data across all schools in Oxnard. The goal here is to model transparency. Even though school leaders or support staff may not necessarily have access to this district-level data, we still need to be looking at it together.
Note: Oxnard School District data has been replaced with Panorama demonstration data.
2. Asset-Based Thinking
Next, I model assets-based thinking. I first notice the green on the page, which indicates a strong sense of belonging at one of our middle schools. I juxtapose that to a data point showing that only 41 percent of those middle schoolers responded favorably to the emotion regulation topic. I model wanting to support emotion regulation (an area for improvement) in addition to sense of belonging (an area of strength).
Note: Oxnard School District data has been replaced with Panorama demonstration data.
3. Curiosity
As I drill down into school-level data, I facilitate the process of curiosity. As I look at emotion regulation data from my 77 middle school students in the school, I see that the data is not green. And I'm genuinely curious about it.
4. Vulnerability
I begin to have a conversation of vulnerability with my staff. I say, “This is about us taking a look at a result that we know comparatively is below the national norm and stands out to us. It's OK for me not to have the answer on why that is. It's OK to be curious. And I also know that I have to move forward, and I have to dive into, ‘Why is that so?’”
5. Equity
Next, with a clear focus on equity, I begin to have a conversation about disaggregation of the data by differentiated groups. One of the things that I look at is ethnicity, noticing a disparity between 40 percent favorable responses for Hispanic students and 47 percent favorable responses for white students. And we ask: "Why is that? Why is that gap there?"
6. Prioritization
Then, I begin to model prioritization and identify what I want to focus on related to student emotion regulation. I notice in the results that 29 percent of students responded favorably to the question, "How often were you able to pull yourself out of a bad mood?" To me, that stands out as a priority area.
7. Cognitive Processing
Then, I'll actually click on that question in Panorama’s platform to open up trends in demographic information. Looking at this data, I can see the breakdown by specific student groups in particular—by ELL status, by special education status, by gender, by grade level, and by race ethnicity.
Cognitive processes include thinking, knowing, remembering, judging, and problem solving. In this example, my cognitive processing begins with further investigation. In the Student Success platform, I filter my student data by gender, grade level, and race ethnicity. Panorama's platform then displays those SEL results alongside academic, attendance, and behavior data. I click on the red (reported no SEL strengths) and yellow (reported some SEL strengths) bands to identify students who may be in need of supports based on this holistic data picture.
Note: Oxnard School District data has been replaced with Panorama demonstration data.
8. Intentionality
When I did that, I found four students. Modeling the process of intentionality, those are the four students that I intend to focus on. Putting myself in the shoes of a staff member at the school site, I consider: "What am I going to do? What did the data lead me to? What did I find, and what am I going to do about it now?"
Note: Oxnard School District data has been replaced with Panorama demonstration data.
Once I identify those students, Panorama has an outstanding intervention platform where you can create group intervention plans. By the time we reach this point, I advise staff to create a goal for each intervention plan in this format: By ____, _____ students will be able to ______ as measured by _____.
Note: Oxnard School District data has been replaced with Panorama demonstration data.
After identifying students and setting a goal, the next step in creating the intervention plan is to set a start date and intervention duration of six weeks. In the Panorama platform, I’ll define how I will track progress, such as by taking notes on a weekly basis.
In this way, staff have clear processes to follow and the freedom of exploring different interventions based on wherever their data dives lead.
"In the Panorama platform, I’ll define how I will track progress, such as taking notes on a weekly basis."
Moving Forward
We can, even in the virtual environment, reach out and connect with our kids. And we can still hold staff compassionately accountable for moving forward, even in today’s unknown circumstances.
Chris Ridge is the director of pupil services at Oxnard Public Schools in Oxnard, California. Chris and his team of school counselors and outreach specialists support families and educators across the district. Learn more about his work here.
