Principals do not tend to discuss how many or few office referrals they have per year, semester, week, quarter etc. My office has seemed pretty quiet lately but I needed some data to see if what I thought was happening was a reality. And it is!!!
Last year at this time our students had accumulated 53 negative office visits. So far this year I have only had 19 negative office referrals. To me that is awesome! But is it really? I wouldn’t know because it is not usually a topic of conversation among administrators. I wish I knew if this was a high or low number. Do any of you get data on your school discipline numbers?
I shared this information with my staff last night as a celebration. I attribute this to the quality of my teachers and the relationships they build with their students. Yes, I have had some “unofficial” conversations with some students, but that usually nips the problem in the bud so to speak. Yes, my teachers have come to me for advice about situations and sometimes my advice has been to “send them to the office.” Some events need documentation. I truly believe that my teachers put up with a lot and/or develop positive working relationships in their classrooms and with their school families that makes our numbers so small.
The current issue of Educational Leadership is about “Data, Now What?” I have not read all the articles yet but they look great and I hope to read them over the break. So what do I do with these numbers? It is my intention to put this in front of the teachers again at collaborative team meetings/grade level meetings. I will ask, “What are you doing in your classroom that is working?” “Can we share this information with others?” Teachers need credit for this because they are doing good things and in turn good things are happening with our students.
53 sounds like a dream…I probably had 19 referrals a day since the school year began. We have had a very discipline heavy start to the year. The economic crisis that surrounds my school is putting a lot of stress on the families at my school. Houses are being repossessed, parents are losing their jobs, etc… I think the kids’ stress levels are high, but so are the teachers’ level of economic stressors.
As for data, we are up to our ears in it! We are now at a point where I have to weed out a lot of the data we keep in order to make it useful for teachers. If we can’t use it to improve instruction, monitor learning or diagnose learning difficulties, I don’t pass it on to the teachers. It sounds easier than it really is!
53 sounds like a dream…I probably had 19 referrals a day since the school year began. We have had a very discipline heavy start to the year. The economic crisis that surrounds my school is putting a lot of stress on the families at my school. Houses are being repossessed, parents are losing their jobs, etc… I think the kids’ stress levels are high, but so are the teachers’ level of economic stressors.
As for data, we are up to ears in it! I find myself needing to weed out the data that does not inform instruction or progress and helping teachers focus on data that helps their teaching and student learning. This is a large part of what I do, and what my assistant principal and I confer on regularly! Our teachers are in teams that examine student data (work samples) 3-4 times a month. It’s pretty amazing!
Yes, I think the economy is going to start to effect all of us soon. We have lots of foreclosures in our district too right now. Especially one subdivision in my attendance area. We lost at least 12 kids to foreclosure.
The only data that I present to my teachers is office referrals. I don’t keep track of the few times that I just have to conference with a student. My teachers really work together to try to solve problems. But if they bring it to me I know it is bad so I want to be as supportive and helpful as possible.
Thanks for the comment!!! Good Luck!!
We are a PBS school, so a team of teachers review monthly discipline data. We are in the early stages of using this data. However, it has been helpful in spotting trends in our discipline not only from year to year but within the same year, such as times of day that most discipline occurs or locations. For example, we have noticed that a problem area for us is recess. So our PBS committee is working with the recess supervisers and teachers to help be proactive to turn this problem area around. The data we look at comes straight from the office referral data that we have to input into our school information system anyway; so, there’s no extra work in collecting the data.