Aug 10, 2026 · 46 min · 13 segments
In this episode, I sit down with **Dr. Brennan Chandler**, Assistant Professor of Dyslexia at Georgia State University, to talk about how schools can move beyond simply *collecting*literacy data and…
Brennan ChandlerGuestAmy BurkholderHostYeah, well, I want to jump right in because I want to talk about what is this meaningful data dig? What does it look like?
So when I think about a data dig and really digging down into that and uncovering what's going on, I think of it really as a funnel.
And I think about it from different perspectives, and we can talk about those.
I think about it oftentimes right now from a school-level perspective, like the school-level team, principal, literacy coach looking at the data school-wide.
Then we can also think about it from that teacher, that actual teacher lens and that classroom-wide lens and then drill down there.
But I want to think about a school level because that's some of the work that I've been doing with this and the work I've done at 152 with you all and Lisa.
We have all this school-wide data, right? So we have this data that comes back to us.
And I want to define what I mean by benchmarking so we're all on the same page here.
And it really answers this question, who might need support? And how effective is the instruction that's happening? Those are the two questions I think benchmarking is really answering.
It's not telling us what we're made to do next instructionally, right? But it's telling us, okay, what's going on? It's like this temperature check in our school.
And so the benchmark data that I often work with are curriculum-based measures or CBMs.
There's so much data to support the use of this sort of measure that helps.
I mean, traditional classroom testing that we think about often relies on mastery learning or mastery monitoring.
You think about end of unit tests, think about any sort of phonics check right out of foundations, all of that, testing a single skill in isolation.
and moving on once it's checked off, that is not what these benchmarking sort of tests are giving us, right? Curriculum-based measures are these CBMs look at general outcomes instead.
Yeah, well, I want to jump right in because I want to talk about what is this meaningful data dig? What does it look like?
So when I think about a data dig and really digging down into that and uncovering what's going on, I think of it really as a funnel.
And I think about it from different perspectives, and we can talk about those.
I think about it oftentimes right now from a school-level perspective, like the school-level team, principal, literacy coach looking at the data school-wide.
Then we can also think about it from that teacher, that actual teacher lens and that classroom-wide lens and then drill down there.
But I want to think about a school level because that's some of the work that I've been doing with this and the work I've done at 152 with you all and Lisa.
We have all this school-wide data, right? So we have this data that comes back to us.
And I want to define what I mean by benchmarking so we're all on the same page here.
And it really answers this question, who might need support? And how effective is the instruction that's happening? Those are the two questions I think benchmarking is really answering.
It's not telling us what we're made to do next instructionally, right? But it's telling us, okay, what's going on? It's like this temperature check in our school.
And so the benchmark data that I often work with are curriculum-based measures or CBMs.
There's so much data to support the use of this sort of measure that helps.
I mean, traditional classroom testing that we think about often relies on mastery learning or mastery monitoring.
You think about end of unit tests, think about any sort of phonics check right out of foundations, all of that, testing a single skill in isolation.
and moving on once it's checked off, that is not what these benchmarking sort of tests are giving us, right? Curriculum-based measures are these CBMs look at general outcomes instead.
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3 of 8
When Students Haven't Learned
Teachers may need rethink who owns learning
From Hunches to Impact
Data turns teacher instincts into targeted action
The Data Changed Everything
The data revealed a different instructional need
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