How One Diocese Has Embraced Big Data for Its Catholic Schools

One oft-asked question has prompted the Catholic schools in the Diocese of Sacramento to re-imagine how they use assessment data to increase student achievement. The inquiry, typically made when parents are comparing possible schools for their young children, goes like this:

"Can you prove your school will be the best option for keeping our kids 'on track to be college- and career-ready?'" said Rick Maya, who was compelled to take action on this inquiry during his service as diocesan schools superintendent.

Maya believes, and research supports, that a student’s path to college begins in the early grades, so he prompted his school leadership team to roll out a system of interim and end-of-year assessments for each student—spanning third grade through high school.

Strong ACT college entrance test scores already reveal that the average student in diocesan high schools has been well prepared for future studies. “But for that graduate, the journey started in the first grade,” said Maya. He pushed his team to map each student's entire journey from enrollment to graduation. Although Maya completed five years as superintendent on Dec. 31, he said he believes that the “big data” plan will help prove the oft-sited "Catholic school advantage” to a new generation of parents.  

Sacramento is one of the first dioceses in the country to sign on with a comprehensive system of testing to track elementary and secondary school performance. Under a new “Aspire” brand being phased in, incremental tests will start at the end of third grade and follow students all the way up to the ACT college entrance exam. Each year’s results will reveal patterns of an individual’s learning to illustrate the track that culminated in the levels of college-readiness tallied in the ACT.

“Eventually, we’ll be able to look at a successful high school junior and backwards-map to see where they were—what track they were on way back in third grade,” said Laurie Power, chief academic officer and now the driving force for the Sacramento Diocese’s unfolding strategy.

Parents will value these year-end tests as indicators of where their children stand in relation to the path toward eventual college-readiness, Power said. Educators benefit, too; a sixth-grade teacher, for example, can receive a report that eighty-six percent of his or her class is on the trajectory to be college-ready. Teachers sharing these data points will be able to adjust their class-wide and individualized approaches to boost that percentage.

Kim Doyle, one of the diocese’s regional school superintendents working with Power, said her experience tells her few school systems take this data-driven, trajectory approach; instead, they test for proficiency based on statewide standards. The norms are geared toward each grade level rather than a bigger picture—the ultimate goals of college and career.

“In other schools, the ACT test comes in at the high school junior level, but by that time, for some, it’s too late,” she said. “Low-performing students have had fewer opportunities for course corrections at an early age.

So far, after two years of phasing in the Aspire system, fifth- and sixth-graders throughout the diocese have begun taking those tests. The news for Sacramento is good, said Power. “Across all five subjects—English, Reading, Writing, Science, and Math—our students have well outperformed the national average, by fifteen percentage points in English in some cases.”

But the goal-oriented ACT assessments are only part of the transformation Maya originated and the leadership team is extending under the authority of Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto. An additional system of formative assessments, conducted every nine weeks, is helping teachers monitor how individual students master the Math and English content prescribed for every nine-week module throughout the diocese.

A lot of data is generated, requiring constant interpretations and responses, so teachers have varied in their reactions to these formative assessments. The empowerment from the data is “really unique from a diocesan perspective,” said Doyle, because educators can now monitor how fifth graders across multiple schools are learning the prescribed content for each segment of the year. They can see subject areas where they could teach better, students could learn better, and some bundles of content could be reassessed in consultation among colleagues.

“The schools using the formative data most effectively have leaders who created grade-level data teams,” said Power. In some schools, third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers gather to look at interim results and can consider modifying their instruction or developing extra resources for students if weak spots appear consistently in certain areas of learning.

Occasional resistance to these data-driven adjustments has emerged during the first three years from teachers concerned about the effectiveness of the approach, but the leadership team team is aware that an adjustment period will be necessary. Teachers and students alike can use the system for self-improvement, Power said.

“Have we seen it become more embraced and better used? Yes.”

Maya said his term as superintendent convinced him Sacramento needed more comprehensive testing. This data reflects the Catholic school advantage, a faith-based opportunity to overcome the achievement gap hindering too many inner-city youths.

“If we can bring the data to the conversation, then we can move from educating less than five percent of Catholic youth to doubling that overnight—if we prove what we all believe.”