
Dr. Nancy Jones is a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Threshold Achievement Test for Information Literacy. In this interview, conducted by email, she tells us about her work as a school district administrator in Southern California with a focus on working with teachers to make the most of assessment data.
Nancy has been on the TATIL Advisory Board since the beginning. Her experience with schools and assessment has been invaluable.
Question: Please tell us a bit about your work with the Encinitas Union School District.
Nancy: During my 40+ years with the Encinitas Union School District I served in the positions of teacher, principal, and administrator/director of support services. My work at the district office level focused on data & assessment, state and federal special programs and resource development. I assisted teachers in transitioning to the new California digital assessments; trained them on utilizing data to inform their goal setting, instruction, and progress analysis; and provided instruction on assessment development. California adopted the Smarter Balanced Assessment System, which includes computer adaptive summative assessments, practice tests and interim assessments requiring teacher training for successful implementation. My role also involved assisting teachers to understand the power of using assessment data to address group and individual student growth and adapt their instruction to increase student progress. As data-driven decision-making has become a critical component to teacher effectiveness, I focused additional teacher training on assessment development using a high quality item bank selected by the district. Assessment data were also used to establish need in the grant proposals I wrote for the district.
Q: What are you currently working on? ...continue reading "Meet the TATIL Advisory Board: Nancy Jones"