A lot is said about how the teaching profession has changed in recent years, but little is said about how school administrators have also had to adjust to the times. As classrooms have become more digitized, learning styles have shifted, and the public school system responds to new dynamics, the school administrator position is changing to accommodate new needs.
For instance, nationwide budget cuts have meant schools are scrambling to keep important programs open — whether special education, after-school activities, or career counseling — adding more pressure to the school principal role, among other staff positions. What’s true is that it has never been more important to make the right decisions as a school leader amid systemic, social, economic, and cultural struggles.
The choices made by a principal have a strong effect on classrooms and, therefore, students. In fact, the effectiveness of a principal is also crucial in student success, as illustrated by Wallace research — students improved in math and reading when under the leadership of exceptional school administrators.
At a time when data matters to arrive at the best conclusions, how can school administrators take advantage of data resources? From small but mighty changes to bigger tech rollouts, let’s explore edtech tools for leaders to make the most of the data available to them.
Access Class Performance with Assessment Platforms
Designing new curricula, connecting with teachers and students, and improving overall learning conditions — among some other crucial school admin tasks — should ultimately be reflected in grades. Assessment performance is arguably the best dataset for school leaders to collect and analyze to evaluate school progress and make better decisions based on it.
In fact, tech giants have asserted that gathering and processing valuable data leads to better decision-making in businesses, and the education sector shouldn’t be an exception. Having verifiable statistics on school performance, and even more granular grade, classroom, and student data, can give administrators a realistic picture of the work that needs to be done, and what is already working.
EdTech Solutions for School Administrators
Using an assessment platform that integrates with the Student Information System (SIS) and leverages the cloud to build and host tests, showcase grades, and give admins the ability to create reports based on this information makes a world of difference for administrators and teachers.
Instead of taking extra time to deliver the information manually or digitize it, then email or upload it to another system, the assessment platform grades and quickly makes it available to the appropriate parties for reviewing on their devices. From it, administrators can see where teachers and students need extra support, spot grade-wide weaknesses and strengths, and build from there.
Quizli, for example, recognizes the importance of data for critical roles such as school administrators, giving them the ability to access and analyze it from a dashboard inside the platform. This multi-audience assessment intelligence layer helps unify the entire school system’s mission, keeping everyone in the loop with the information they need to excel at their jobs.
Digitize Common Processes for Easier Data Reviewing
Although the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic unleashed several shifts that school leaders still contend with today, it also opened the door for a slew of digital solutions that turned cumbersome tasks into seamless ones. Overall, digitization has meant that school administrators can oversee classroom activities from anywhere through their laptops, removing extra steps and giving them almost instant visibility into daily teacher, student, and staff needs.
One simple yet powerful aspect that has been slowly but surely transformed is classroom roll calls. Before the pandemic, many schools took to paper or, at most, Excel sheets to take class attendance and report this to school admins. After the fact, calling roll via cloud software for easier attendance tracking and reporting gained more popularity for its ease of use and information-sharing advantages. Such a tool, for instance, lets school administrators view student attendance, teacher notes, and other data about this important aspect of student statistics to make decisions based on it.
Gathering this information, while it might seem inconsequential, can enrich school reports and keep leaders well-informed about their average student attendance without the clutter of physical sheets, the hassle of Excel sheets, and the constant back-and-forth with teachers.
If you think about it, this is just one of many daily obligations that can be digitized to simplify life for everyone.
Specialized Time Management Solutions for School Administrators
Have you, in your school administrator job, ever taken note of all the tasks you do throughout the day and the time they take? By the end of the day, you’ll realize you might be prioritizing the wrong activities and missing some crucial ones.
Edutopia asked a school administrator to write down every single thing they did while on the job for two weeks, leading them to improve their time management skills. What they realized is that time slips away from them, and much of the friction in their activities could be removed to make them easier and free up their time. At the end of their time tracking journey, they allotted more time to connecting with students, teachers, and staff, and spent less time on emails and meetings that could be emails.
But you don’t have to write down every single activity to spot flaws in your routine. Adopting school administrator software and digital time management tools can help organize your agenda, set reminders for important tasks, and let you prioritize certain daily activities that make all the difference when making decisions that ripple across your school or even district. In time, you’ll realize you’ve become more effective by maximizing your communication with the school community and turning this knowledge into better outcomes.
Feedback Collection EdTech Tools
Speaking of communication, as much as school leaders try, it’s simply not possible to engage with every person in school, from students to the kitchen staff and beyond. But, ideally, you should be able to get a clear understanding of their activities and what they’re missing or loving from their job and learning experience.
This is where feedback collection edtech tools can give a voice to every member of the community, so you can assess how to best serve them. This can be as simple as creating a Google form and enabling it for department leaders to take everyone’s feedback on a weekly or monthly basis, or acquiring a dedicated feedback tool that integrates with the current school software.
Establishing this practice can render school-wide meetings more efficient by addressing pre-established feedback or skipping it altogether, allowing school administrators to decide when to tend to matters on a more regular basis and leaving more space at meetings to discuss other situations.
Adding the appropriate tech into seemingly small activities can turn a good school administrator into a great one. Sometimes, all you need is a bit of extra support from an edtech tool that can minimize the unnecessary tasks and give you back time for the things that truly make a difference in the profession.
But don’t let technology overwhelm you and take over — after all, school admins should stay as human as possible to properly engage with the community they serve. Digitization is about letting technology build bridges where you can’t, starting small and choosing the right digital solutions to make a big impact in your school.
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