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Acknowledging that asking teachers to analyze student data has not fundamentally changed how they teach, Department of Education officials are beginning to change their approach. And other states just beginning to build their own student databases can learn from the city’s pivot, according to a report out today from Education Sector, a D.C.-based think tank.

The report recounts the brief history of New York City’s adventures with its own database known as ARIS, for Achievement Reporting and Innovation System. It also looks at schools’ gradual adoption of “data inquiry teams,” which about 65 percent of teachers were using at the end of last year.

Inquiry teams are groups of four or five teachers that select a small number of low-performing students to focus on. With information culled from ARIS, the teachers try and alter curriculum and teaching methods to improve the students’ performance. These teams are the DOE’s largest-scale reform that directly targets the instructional process. Officials hope to bring the participation rate up to 90 percent by the end of this year. (more…)