Using Excel Dashboards to track Lag and Lead Indicators in a School Setting

Introduction

As part of the leadership team of a large government school, we oftentimes find ourselves torn between different priorities and knowing where to invest our finite resource of time is an ongoing challenge. With an awareness of the business world focus on maximising ‘return on investment’, I have always been cognisant that when we narrow our focus on one thing, we are, by nature, more than likely losing sight of another. Choosing what to focus on is of paramount importance. It was with great interest that I have recently been introduced to the term ‘Return on Data’ (R.O.D) through the work of Dr Pete Stebbins and their team.

A Bit of Background

I have a significant interest in human behaviour/psychology and finding ways to ensure so many people (our school has 700+ students as well as nearly 100 staff) are heading in the same direction is an ongoing mission. We have had the pleasure of having Dr Pete visit our school to work with the leadership team on his suite of resources targeting high performance schools with an emphasis on Achievement and Engagement through the 4 KPI’s shown below:

(Image 1: HPT 4 KPI’s, Stebbins, 2018)

From this suite, our school currently uses the Team Talent Map Profile (Appendices 1), Team Above/Below the Line Behaviour Chart (Appendices 2) and Protocols for Calling Behaviour (Appendices 3) to ensure there is an agreed understanding of what it looks like when the team is operating effectively as well as mechanisms for getting the team back on track when they are not.

We also conduct our leadership meetings through a ‘HPT’ agenda style (Appendices 4) as well as utilising the ‘red/yellow cards’ which have been a blessing for keeping meetings on-time, task focussed and inclusive. Each team member also conducts a weekly ‘pulse’ rating for how they are feeling against the 4 KPI’s within their team.

Dashboard

Stebbins (2021) has stated that “The trade secret among High Performance Schools who attain such high levels of success is in their comparatively higher level of R.O.D – Return On Data!” (Stebbins, 2021). As Watts (2019) succinctly puts it, “a leading indicator informs business leaders of how to produce desired results, a lagging indicator measures current production and performance. While a leading indicator is dynamic but difficult to measure, a lagging indicator is easy to measure but hard to change” (Watts, 2019).

We have begun utilising the HPT dashboard to track lag (outcome) and lead (predictor) indicators and further improve our “R.O.D”. Shown below in Image 2 is an example using anonymised, fictitious data:

(Image 2: Sandy Strait Dashboard: Anonymised data- NOT school data)

This dashboard houses a lot of data including:

Student results and effort (Attendance rates, achievement rates, behaviour data)
Teacher collective efficacy (job satisfaction, work/life wellbeing etc)
Community engagement (Newsletter, social media data)

We are conscious that correlation of data does not necessarily mean causation and we need to be careful of jumping to conclusions. Our job becomes looking for patterns, asking questions and where possible identifying these lead (predictor) indicators. Initial blind-spots that have been revealed by this data include the work/life/wellbeing of teams as well as tracking the ‘effort’ of students in specific subjects. Scrutinising the data for patterns will be exciting as time progresses.

We are confident we are on the right track for collecting the right data: recognising regional priorities and distilling this down to our school context. More important than this, is the rigorous interrogation of this data and ensuring teachers are let in on the secret, and a critical part of the solutions. To have these discussions, we aim to work through Education Queensland’s Inquiry Cycle:

(Image 3: Inquiry Cycle: Education Queensland (2021)

We also need to be aware that not everything about our school is on the dashboard. With this in mind, here are some great questions we think will be helpful for us when working with this:

What do we notice? What do we wonder?
What are the patterns here?
Who does this apply to?
How reliable is this evidence?
What are our assumptions? What is the problem with our reasoning?
If it wasn’t caused by this, what else could it be?
What would happen if we…?
What would happen if we didn’t…?
What would this look like if it were easy?

Conclusion

We’re looking forward to using this dashboard as a system of checks and balances to calibrate our thoughts and actions towards ensuring every student is “Striving for Success”. It’s a work in progress. Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

Appendices