Success Stories
Fearless Data Collection in Washington, DC
“I think the key to the success is the buy-in, the sustainability, and just the data collection…using your data to show how ‘SECOND STEP’ can be helpful,” says Anise Walker, director of training and prevention education for the Washington, DC Student Support Center.
Using funds from a Safe Schools, Healthy Students grant, the center provides training, support, and technical assistance to Washington, DC charter schools implementing the SECOND STEP program. Walker is echoing what many schools are experiencing: the need to demonstrate with carefully collected data—such as discipline referral figures—that their social and emotional learning programs are working in order to get funding and sustain buy-in.
Data Collection Problems
But Sarah Ghaleb, the center’s director of quality assurance and evaluation, who as part of the grant has been collecting and analyzing data from the schools to measure the SECOND STEP program’s effects, found that school staff often felt too overwhelmed or intimidated to do data collection effectively. “What I found is that anything that has to do with evaluation or data collecting is terrifying. It really is. And that is the one weakness I think that a lot of schools have.”
At first, it was difficult to get teachers to fill out and turn in the forms needed to track implementation and office referrals. “It was like…in some ways, pulling teeth, especially in the schools where they didn’t have the administrative support so they didn’t really see the need to turn in what they needed to turn in.”
The center addressed these and other problems by creating a strong, consistent support system to back up the schools and making sure each school had its own SECOND STEP coordinator. But the real breakthrough in terms of actually collecting data came during the end-of-year retreat with the coordinators. Ghaleb and the others knew the teachers felt that they were buried in forms, so they asked the coordinators what would make the documentation easier. The answer was loud and clear: Make the forms quick and easy.
Reforming the Forms
Center staff completely redesigned the forms so that teachers could quickly circle the appropriate answers, date them, and send them back, rather than having to take the time to figure out what to write in the blanks. Ghaleb recalls, “Before, they had to fill in what the name of the lesson was and how many kids were involved and things we realized that we didn’t need to keep track of. And for fidelity reasons we needed to be able to make sure that they were following in the scope and sequence, so it made more sense to have it written out so that they would just circle.”
They Actually Applauded
Ghaleb was surprised by the enthusiastic response she received when she unveiled the new forms. “It was funny because when I showed them the form, they actually applauded. That’s how you know you’re doing something that will be more effective.”
Following Up
Although the new forms make documenting implementation and office referral information easier, coordinators and center staff still have to remind some school staff to turn in their paperwork every month. But the results of the extra time spent tracking down information seem to be worth the effort, since the data is more complete. Ghaleb explains, “We enter the data in, and then whoever is missing…we just follow up. And it’s a lot of hand-holding. It’s an exhausting process, but the outcomes are well worth it.”
Walker and Ghaleb are particularly proud that one of their schools reported that their office referrals dropped almost by half—from 12.3 percent to 7.1 percent—when they implemented the program. A second school using the program started the school year with a relatively low number of referrals—6.6 percent—and still reduced it to 4.8 percent.
Ghaleb is excited about the results of their hard work and dedication to the program. “If you believe enough in the program where you put the systems in place so that the data is collected effortlessly and the teachers believe in what they’re teaching, it makes a huge difference. And the results obviously are shown.”
