As teachers, we work alongside students, witnessing their thinking and learning process. We see students as writers, readers, listeners, speakers, and viewers.

However, in many “data-driven” schools, the “data” dominating meetings and students’ narratives do not have student or teacher voice but mostly reflect standardized, multiple choice tests.

Data analysis companies are thriving while schools purchase subscriptions for access to online software to analyze state and local standardized test scores. The information from the analysis—spreadsheets cross-referencing students with standards, demographics, teachers, other students—is not bad, especially because it provides teachers with multilevel reports.

In Texas, lead4ward (including staar4ward) is cited in nearly 700 school budgets as part of schools’ improvement plans, professional development plans, and district improvement plans, sometimes allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars to one company.

This phenomenon is not limited to Texas. Schools across the United States are using “data-driven” to communicate sound decision making to stakeholders. However, two major stakeholders are being left out: students and teachers.

Data help us make informed decisions, but we must be aware of what the data assess, what we are valuing, and what the data’s limitations are.

Some leading education websites and books romanticize the idea that “data” help educators “determine essential standards” students will be retaught and retested for mastery. This means standardized tests determine what is taught and standards with low passing rates are taught more. Sometimes “data” also determine what standards and vocabulary are not taught because they are not tested.

Some schools systematically allocate “standards” to grade levels, omitting them from others. Standards are sometimes segregated when schools “determined essential standards” to teach students of low-performing demographics to help “guarantee” higher scores and show growth on the federal Annual Yearly Progress report. In some “data-driven schools,” standards are no longer a promise to every student but conditional to standardized test data.

Standardized tests do not tell us why students do not understand something or how to help them. Yet some schools created local “high-quality interim assessments” to address the why and how. This approach validates more testing but continues to focus on test performance versus students’ actual thinking process.

As educators, we can determine why students are struggling. During guided reading, we have the ability to determine what influenced students’ cues. Did the meaning, syntax, or visuals have an impact on the child’s reading? We can even dig deeper by noting the actual elements of the text the student used for each cue and the patterns in which students used them. A teacher can witness a student make a mistake and then determine the cause, not just determine the standard.

When working in a small group with students or one-on-one, we have the opportunity to acquire qualitative data that reflect where understanding broke down. Sometimes we realize that a student is nothing like the standardized test data, whereas other times we see that the data were a small glimpse of a student’s true mastery of a standards.

Without looking for root causes, we are missing essential teaching opportunities. As a student who was labeled an English learner, I valued every time a teacher recognized that I knew something and recognized that my mistake was oversight or error. Let’s not miss opportunities to validate students.

Additionally, the data-driven phenomenon is often accompanied by interpreting standards solely within testing rigor, limiting the depth of concepts and standards to how they appear on tests. In Texas, some schools teach only first- or third-person point of view and not as perspective in order to “stay true” to the Texas standards.

Even the formatting of material, with student materials looking exactly like the test, robs students of the opportunity to learn 21st-century computer literacy skills. We cannot rob students of learning about formatting and leveraging material for varying audiences out of fear students will “be so shocked” by the test looking different from daily work that they will perform badly. Students need authentic texts in authentic formats.

Let’s add students and teachers back into data-driven schools by recognizing the limitations of standardized test data and empowering teachers to determine root cause of students’ struggle(s) in order to provide sound intervention. Let’s teach students more systematically versus teaching the test more systematically. We can know all students as writers, readers, listeners, speakers, and viewers.

Ilce Perot is currently an international literacy consultant and English learner specialist for LitLife, Inc. Ilce has traveled the United States and internationally supporting teachers of students across a range of settings including bilingual, ESL/ENL/ELL, Spanish education, and dual language programs. Ilce is currently pursuing her doctorate degree in education.