How to Talk to Families about Ed Data
In my last article, I provided some general guidelines on how to go about conducting positive and constructive ed data conversations with students and families. I wrote about the importance of leading with empathy, the art of focusing students and families’ attention and the magic of smart systems. In this article, I’ll speak to the specificities of communicating with families.
Families are critical because, when push comes to shove, no one is as invested in a child’s success as their caretakers. No matter how much you might care for and want the best for your students, the reality is that your priorities are split in ways that families’ simply are not. In order to leverage the massive potential that a mutually beneficial partnership with caretakers can have in supporting your students, effective communication about how their child is doing is key. To that end, this article will cover not just how to talk about data with families but how to structure that communication as well.
#1: Invest Early and Often
I touched on this basic principle briefly in the first article. When it comes to leading an ed data conversation with empathy, a well-established relationship can do wonders. For educators, it makes it easier to tailor the conversation to the families’ needs; for families, it facilitates the occasionally uncomfortable process of asking questions.
Building these relationships is admittedly more complicated with families than it is with students. Even though it is just as important, the fact that you’re not interacting with caretakers on a daily basis like you are with students means that relationship building takes more effort. When I was a middle school teacher who worked with over 100 students a year, the main way I was able to touch base with each family was by putting aside time at the start of the school year to reach out to families. Each day, I reached out to three to five families to tell them something positive about their child.
This routine accomplished a number of important things. First, it made sure that families didn’t associate a call from Ms. Cortés with their child being in trouble. I could be calling to tell them something positive! Next, it helped me identify the family’s communication preferences early in the year. Is this a parent who only responds to emails? Does my student have a caretaker who prefers text messages? Figuring this out within the first few months of school saved me a lot of time and energy chasing down families through communication avenues that they didn’t use. It also allowed me to “put money in the bank,” which would be valuable if I needed to have more difficult conversations with families later in the school year.
#2: Troubleshoot Proactively - Or Else
Investing early also helped me make sure that families were on board with the systems that I had set up at the start of the year to keep them up to date with their student’s data. My after-school phone calls offered me ample opportunity to make sure that my students’ caretakers understood where and when to look at their student’s data and to troubleshoot any issues they might be having. I was lucky in the sense that the schools where I taught used student portals as the primary way of communicating to families, which meant that I had a consistent place with the most current data to direct families to. If you’re thinking to yourself, “well that’s great for you, but my school doesn’t have that,” don’t worry: there are some great user-friendly, free platforms out there. Some of my favorites are ClassDojo and Google Classroom.
Whichever system you or your school uses, what you’re looking to accomplish by troubleshooting your data communication systems early in the year is to equip families with the tools that they need to find the information they are looking for. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to take care of as much of the problem solving as possible at the start of the school year: it is the key to making sure your ed data communication systems are sustainable for you.
Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for a school year of chasing parents down to get them really important information. In the worst case scenario, you run the risk of families not getting this information, only to be surprised in the worst ways when report cards and family-teacher conferences roll around. Half the battle with families is getting data to them – fight this battle early, when it is more manageable and there are less hurt feelings to contend with.
#3: Provide Relevant Context
Again, this is a big part of focusing students and families’ attention, which I touched on earlier. As the expert in the conversation, who has more access to student data than families might, you are responsible for drawing their attention to the right information and clarifying why it’s important. As with training families on communication systems, it’s helpful to do this early in the year.
For families, this often means clarifying the grading policy and scale so that they understand which assignments and categories play the largest role in determining their child’s grade. I have had many conversations with families of struggling students where the major point of confusion is, “but they always do their homework.” It’s important to explain why and how their student’s grade is not simply a reflection of that category. By the end of these conversations, families should also clearly understand what counts as passing and have a sense of what it takes to get there. Frontloading this information early in the year and coming back to it makes all data conversations – especially the difficult ones – much smoother.
Next, while there are certain pieces of information that all families should have access to, you want to be sure that the way you’re framing data matches individual families’ goals. If you’ve done the legwork of building up a relationship, then identifying what they care about in terms of their student’s data shouldn’t take much guesswork. In the best case scenario, you can even set goals together and determine as a group how you’ll keep track of the student’s progress. These benchmarks can then be revisited throughout the year.
When providing relevant context, I also check that families are aware of the major events that impact their child’s academic performance well in advance. This includes school-wide dates such as major tests, the end of the trimester/semester and promotion in doubt deadlines, as well as a basic overview of when they can expect to hear from me throughout the year. I’ve prepared a template that you can use here.
Finally, when you’re having the kinds of ed data conversations that we all dread – the tough ones where you have to deliver unfortunate news – I recommend having benchmarks and comparison points ready. For example, if a child barely passed an exam, you’ll want to have the average grade on the exam (particularly if it was one that most students passed) to paint a more accurate picture of the child’s progress. If less than stellar marks were given for an essay, then have an on-grade-level exemplar ready for families to reference. As always, tone makes all the difference: as you present these benchmarks, it’s critical to emphasize that you and the family you’re addressing are a team.
#4: Have a Strategy Ready
In any data conversation, preparing strategies that respond to a student’s data are a major way to keep these interactions with families empowering and constructive. Especially in difficult conversations, you do not want to leave caretakers hanging.
Whenever families would ask me what they could do, I would always make sure to ask how much time they could give to supporting their child. In the community my last school served, many caretakers worked multiple jobs and did not have unlimited time to give to helping their child out academically. Most – if not all – of these time-constrained parents and caretakers wanted to help and would seek out advice on how to make that time most effective.
Based on what they were able to offer, I’d give them concrete steps they could take to support their student in their goals. For instance, a parent with only twenty minutes a night could make sure that their student, who was struggling with phonics, read their favorite book out loud to a family member before going to sleep. For some of my students struggling in math, we created math fact flash cards using index cards and I asked families to make a game of it at home to help build their fluency. Structuring recommendations and next steps in this way meant that more adults were working together to support our students.
I’d like to close this article with an example of the magic that can happen when multiple educators are making use of these best practices. During my last year in the classroom, my grade had its best testing season in math. I attribute this success to the fact that the 5th grade team implemented systems that made the process very transparent for everyone – administrators, teachers, students and families. First, we took a baseline test and used it to determine how a student would do on the state exam if they were to take it at that moment. Then, in our family-facing communication, we outlined what this score would mean for future opportunities, such as their ability to get into a specialized high school, which is something we knew many parents and caretakers cared about.
This put a student’s academic performance in a context that families could understand. Meeting the families where they were and communicating in a way that centered their goals meant that each student had a greater number of aligned people supporting them in their academic journey. It also encouraged families who weren’t satisfied with the projections to be proactive about asking for guidance on how they could support their child. And, it made it clear with whom educators would need to communicate more regularly to make sure they were kept in the loop.
The results were some of the best test scores we had seen in years. Of course, we couldn’t have done this without other parts of our data culture being in place – but this story goes to show just how important it is to have families on board. I’ll talk a little bit more about what it takes to get students on board with ed data in the last article of this series.