What Gets Measured Gets Done

What are your thoughts on the phrase “What gets measured gets done”? What gets measured gets done." This premise for developing standards is at the core of educational improvement. If it is not important enough to measure, then it is not important enough to do. By Woodard, James R. | The Agricultural Education Magazine, September/October 2004 | Go to article overview In researching a few different articles, I found that this idea is essential for a variety of fields, business, education, government, medicine all rely on metrics to measure growth and progress and make improvements. How does this phrase apply to education assessment and accountability? In order to make the right decisions in improving our instructional programs and student achievement we must have reliable forms of data collection from a variety of assessments. This will help us measure true growth and progress of both our instructional programs and student achievement. These measures also set a standard of accountability by identifying certain trends, weaknesses, and strengths or what John Kotter labels as short term wins to increase motivation. Phrase in Action: This reminds me of when I was working with students that have challenging behaviors. One of the most common requests to the district from teachers or parents is to have 1:1 behavior techs for student to control their behavior. Our district behavior program believed the ultimate goal was to have the student in control of their behavior and denied many requests for 1:1 as a solution before trying a variety of behavior supports. If we even thought about requesting a 1:1 or asking for district support, we had to have documentation to measure the behavior. They were all about data collection and documentation, their motto has always been “if was not documented, it did not happen.” Once we are able to show documentation, the district program would send a staff to assess, collect more data, offer positive behavior supports and then asked us to implement and monitor with fidelity (meaning be consistent and do it for at least 6 weeks to have sufficient data). From there, we would work with the Behavior staff to figure out next steps and the appropriateness of more intensive supports. lack of measurement contributed to a change initiative failing). I have had teachers go to the district to ask for behavior support just by saying I have a very difficult child in my class I need help. And the district behavior staff would see that there was no valid measures or documentation, just a lot of stories and incidents that were never documented. Again, they are looking for specific, observable behavior documentation with times dates and data that was collected over an extended period of time. They would offer a variety of documentation forms and would even model a few ways to collect data. Unfortunately, some teachers feel that this is way too much for them to handle and never follow through with collecting data and doing what the district behavior program asked for. T hey just give up on finding extra support or help with behavior management and then the student sadly misses out on their own education because the teacher is not willing to document and measure the behavior. How will I apply this phrase in my role as a leader? As a future leader, I want to make this idea a priority and create a system of documentation or data collection, so we have the ability to analyze information, see the strengths and weaknesses, set standards to compare against, and develop action plans to improve in areas of need. I think having the documentation and data can also make my requests for change more compelling to my staff by creating a sense of urgency.