Transforming Barnegat

District builds data culture; makes bold changes during period that rocked U.S education

Brian Latwis, Ed.D, superintendent of the Barnegat Township School District, has a vision. And no problem – large, small, or microscopic – will be allowed to sink its teeth into it. That includes the largest global health crisis in a century. 

As school systems everywhere grappled with pandemic-induced logistical issues, Brian forged ahead with the district’s community-developed strategic plan and his vision to shape Barnegat into a data-centric school system. He knew his staff’s resilience, fortitude, and heart; more than that, he knew those were strengths he could count on.

Barnegat sits 40 miles northeast of Atlantic City in Ocean County. With six miles of shoreline on Barnegat Bay – a thin strip of Long Beach Island separating it from the Atlantic – Barnegat is a coastal community with working class roots and a maritime heritage. Shipbuilders and sea captains have called the town “home.”

The population of Barnegat doubled in the past 30 years. The number of young families surged, migrating from more urban areas, and waves of retirees streamed in – all charmed by the open spaces and friendliness of residents, and the hint of salt in the air.

It’s a proud town, says data advocate James Barbiere, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction, and human resources. Athletic championships (most recently in volleyball and swimming), art awards, music honors, and drama club accolades provide cause for residents to hold their heads up high. There are academic successes too, but extracurriculars that allow parents and community members to revel at student performance were always in the brighter light.

Internally, the district’s scores on state standardized tests were a source of concern, especially for administrators who knew they didn’t represent the quality instruction seen in the classroom every single day. Some staff members paid no heed to the results. The instruments were to blame, the notion had it, for failing to accurately measure the knowledge and skills of Barnegat’s students. 

No matter the lens used to view them, the state scores certainly didn’t instill happiness or contentment, not even among those who cast a skeptical eye at the exams’ validity. With only the year-end summative NJASK and PARCC/NJSLA scores to measure achievement, and even those offering little specificity into a student’s proficiency in individual state standards, teacher-created assessments and scores on a few internet-based learning platforms were the only guiding lights to personalize instruction.

“I like to use the analogy that our [data analysis] tools were like machetes and axes,” said Barbiere. “We didn’t have more refined, more nuanced tools to parse out data and examine performance in an efficacious way.”

The culture began to shift in the summer of 2018. That’s when Latwis took the Barnegat helm after serving four years as director of special services. During those years, he and Barbiere had developed a close relationship – they complement each other like cookies and milk – and both viewed formative assessment data and its savvy use as the engines that would help propel the district forward. 

LinkIt pilot helps Barnegat find a path to change

Barnegat piloted LinkIt in the spring of 2019 with the administration of benchmark assessments in grades 2-11. The benchmarks, which replicate the difficulty and complexity of state exams, are a window into the abilities of students and an accurate predictor of state test performance. With the benchmark results, teachers and administrators saw the proficiency of kids across math and ELA standards at that very moment in time, not months in the past as the NJSLA data showed (due to the gap between springtime testing administration and fall score release). Remediation could be tailored using the insight gleaned from those formative benchmark results.

“You could immediately tell that this had the potential to change the way we did things,” Latwis remembered. “We weren't one hundred percent sure exactly how it would all come together, or foresee the major initiatives that would ultimately get adopted, but you had the sense that things were never going to be like they were before.”

Excitement built. The decision was made to use LinkIt benchmarking that fall and provide teachers with an extensive introduction about the platform. The administrative team went to work in preparation for the full LinkIt rollout. An assessment manual and lesson plan manual were developed and introduced in the fall of 2019, intensive professional development took place, and new instructional materials were purchased and put into use.

Some bumps in the road were felt – not unusual for new initiatives, particularly ones that breed such systemic change – but the course was set and the road was relatively smooth.

Conversations changed: among teachers, among administrators, and between teachers and administrators. Professional learning communities shifted focus to data and its analyses and application. We have all these numbers, now how do we use it to help students?

Then it happened. It wasn’t a glitch or a monkey wrench. The world fundamentally changed in a way not seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920 – a time before the invention of Band-aids, radio stations, and traffic lights.

In March 2020, COVID protocols forced the end of in-person instruction statewide. The hiatus, which the district had anticipated would last about six weeks based on state education department guidance, lasted the rest of the school year.

“What first went through my mind was feeling disappointment for our students,” said Latwis. “And then disappointment for my administrative team. We had just worked so hard that whole year up to that point. We were so excited that first year to get over the hump of getting all this [benchmark and instructional] material out and in teacher's hands. We felt like we were in a good place. Then we felt that time got robbed from us and our kids.”

The intensive skill reinforcement between LinkIt benchmarks A and B, and B and C, prepared students for state exams that never happened. There would be no proof in the pudding.

Barnegat ‘doubled down’ and the genesis of data culture

The 2020-21 school year opened with split sessions and hybrid instruction. As with districts everywhere, operational struggles, COVID quarantines, and atypical instructional days tested resolve. Full in-person instruction didn’t resume in Barnegat until November. 

Rather than take a step back as you’d expect when adversity impacts initiative, Latwis and the administrative team pressed on. The ambitious data plans and the academic blueprints to achieve the goals in Barnegat’s multiyear strategic plan continued unabated. In fact, the district “doubled down on data,” said Latwis. Data became the district’s lifeblood. What followed would be considered extraordinary in such a short period during typical school years, much less than those disrupted by a pandemic.

The successful LinkIt pilot opened minds to new possibilities and the value of an instructional model informed by real-time formative data. Initial triumphs in identifying issues and raising achievement (e.g.  fourth grade reading and math) helped fuel excitement. 

During 20-21 and 21-22, LinkIt provided the “one-stop shopping” platform to gauge achievement. In addition to benchmark scores, third-party assessment results from platforms such as iReady were warehoused in LinkIt’s Data Locker. This gave educators the ability to examine proficiency across several performance indicators.

Data drove the district’s efforts to remediate pandemic-related learning gaps. It became the source for all Response to Intervention tiering and admission to new Saturday bootcamps created as part of the district’s pandemic response; it’s the foundation for all district instructional goals and curricular changes.

A major decision was made in 2019 to reconfigure the district and move away from the neighborhood elementary school model. The action was taken to address longstanding educational inequities among buildings that were difficult to mitigate. LinkIt benchmark data was used to support the change.

And when deep analyses of benchmark results revealed that certain standards were not properly emphasized, administrators revisited scope, sequence, and pacing to better align the curriculum to state standards.

A school system with a strong data culture becomes more responsive to the needs of students and the operation of the district as a whole. It forms the foundation of a holistic organizational model that demands continuous innovation and flexibility. At the center of a data-centric school district are the people who bring data to life, who find meaning in it and take action. The use of data and its sharing has changed the very essence of stakeholder interaction.

Proficiency, performance bands, and standards now form a common language that teachers use to communicate with parents. (Parents can evaluate their child’s performance through LinkIt’s Parent Portal, see benchmark data that’s included on report cards, and access class/course grades through the district’s student information system.) Data helps parents understand their children from the point of view of teachers – as learners with specific strengths and needs. And in an age when many are concerned about the benefit and rationale for testing, the information serves to show assessment relevance.

The same holds true for students. One of the most palpable changes in Barnegat, one that would make Visible Learning devotees proud, is that students feel a newfound responsibility for their own learning because of data’s ability to communicate where a student is and where he or she should be. Growth mindset is on display everywhere. In higher grades, students even access their own data to reflect on their personal performance and are asked to write individual goals.

Krystina Smith, with the sprawling title of supervisor of mathematics, science, world language, technology/business (6-12) and ESL (K-12), has witnessed the changing dynamic between students and teachers brought about by data.

“Teachers are having conversations with students about their scores,” said Smith. “’Here's how you performed on the benchmark. What is your goal as a student?’ Students are becoming truly invested in seeing their growth. They're running up to the teacher and saying, ‘Hey, did you grade my test yet?’ Or ‘Did you see my benchmark score? I need to see where I am fell. I want to see if I met your expectation of me, but also my expectation for myself.’ We’re really creating self-regulated learners.”

In 2019, the primary insight into student proficiency in state standards essentially came from state exam results released in the school year after kids had completed them. Now after just two years, flush with data and powerful analytics that can be accessed with a few computer keystrokes, Barnegat is a district transformed.

Instructional coaches and data harvests are keys to success

The district’s instructional coaches are important players in Barnegat’s data success story. These seven accomplished educators not only help classroom teachers analyze data, they help their colleagues put it into action. 

For example, the coaches might show ways to leverage the power of LinkIt to differentiate and group students by need for center activities or small group instruction. Or the coaches may reach into their pedagogy toolkits, put together during their years in the classroom, and pull out specific instructional strategies. They are doing what they do best, but instead of reaching just the kids in their own classrooms, they are impacting students on a much broader level.

“The instructional coach might work with the individual teacher and say ‘Hey, let's unpack the curriculum,’” said Barbiere. “’Talk to me about your resources and materials that you're using. What instructional strategies did you employ for this unit? Let's look at some of the other best practices that your colleagues have used.’

 

“The nice thing is that it's a peer-to-peer conversation. They are teachers guiding teachers, and that’s what makes it so powerful. It's not an evaluative conversation. It's ‘Hey, I'm here to help.’ And they bring ideas that they have from their time in the classroom and ideas they've adopted from other practitioners in the district, or effective practices they’ve learned through research or educational literature. They’re so skillful.”

The instructional coaches also work with teachers at individual meetings that are held with building and central office administrators after the district’s tri-annual data harvest. Three times per year, the district compiles data from LinkIt benchmarks, third-party assessments stored in LinkIt, attendance statistics, behavior/discipline information, and cohort data. Everything is analyzed and then discussed with teachers individually. (Teacher do not see assessment results of their colleagues, just their own data.) 

Says Latwis, “When teachers realized that there really wasn’t a negative side to this [the focus on data and data reviews], we weren’t using it as a ‘gotcha,’ they were very quick to adapt and use it because they saw the value. People have to understand that this is not a negative. We're all in this journey together. And this is the information that you need to glean to chart your course.

“When you have something that can really tell you that the hard work that you're putting in is setting you on the right path, it feels good. We've seen a lot of our staff become revitalized. There’s a sense of excitement into what they're doing because they're seeing something tangible, they’re seeing the return on the investment. That’s reason to celebrate.”

The district is continuing its data revolution. Teachers across the grades and subjects are entering their common unit assessments into LinkIt’s. Each question is associated with the specific state standards it is intended to assess. After the tests are completed (in the LinkIt platform), teachers can see precisely the strengths and weaknesses of students by standard and topic. The same color-coded visual language used to show proficiency on benchmarks is used for these teacher-created assessments. Everything is cohesive, unified, and easily understood.

The results of a recent data harvest were revealed to the Barnegat community at a board meeting last month. Large posters (fresh from Barbiere’s new pride and joy, a wide-format printer purchased expressly for high-impact data sharing) displayed around the room provided a walk-around progress monitoring report for attendees. Shown were results from LinkIt benchmarks, iReady, and New Jersey’s Start Strong (assessments which measure a prioritized set of academic standards in ELA, math, and science for grades 4 and up).

The data shows areas of growth and areas in which the impact of COVID-19’s disruptions to traditional schooling still must be overcome. Many districts put on a happy face when sharing measures of student performance with parents and the community at large, emphasizing success over all else. In Barnegat, the transparency helps tell an important narrative – data is here, both good and bad, and it will help guide the district forward. Barnegat’s data-informed planning and instructional practices, forged in the crucible of the pandemic response, are too powerful for anything but success. 

“I truly believe that Barnett is capable of incredible things,” said Latwis. “If we put the proper resources and appropriate tools into the hands of teachers and students, I really think we are capable of taking off like a rocket. I truly believe that.”

Client: LinkIt!