This chapter discusses principles that support using data about teaching and learning and offers several strategies particularly well suited for use by institutional researchers at small colleges in helping faculty, staff, and administrators use data on student learning for improvement.

As a growing entity within higher education organizational structures, enrollment managers (EMs) are primarily tasked with projecting, recruiting, and retaining the student population of their campuses. Enrollment managers are expected by institutional presidents as well as through industry standards to make data-driven planning decisions to reach…

Improving school climate takes time and commitment from a variety of people in a variety of roles. This document outlines key action steps that noninstructional staff--including guidance counselors, social workers, school psychologists, office staff, bus drivers, maintenance and facility staff, and food service staff--can take to support school…

Purpose: The use of data for instructional improvement is prevalent in today's educational landscape, yet policies calling for data use may result in significant variation at the school level. The purpose of this paper is to focus on tools and routines as mechanisms of principal influence on data-use professional learning communities (PLCs).…

The members of the Large Countywide and Suburban District Consortium--a group of large, highly diverse, and successful districts across the country--have made great strides in achieving college and career readiness for all students. While they are succeeding, the consortium proposes that more could be done to accomplish their objectives through…

Analysis of classroom use and utilization data provides essential information for strategic space planning. However, efforts to improve use and/or utilization metrics can be thwarted by ingrained cultural practices, campus politics, lack of understanding, failure to recognize the impact to programmatic needs, absence of a coordinated campus…

Although data driven-decision making has been the mantra of school reform for the last 10 years, school leaders benefit from frequent discussions in how to engage teachers in the process. As a result, the purpose of this paper is to apply Reeves' (2004) framework concerning Antecedents of Excellence in creating a school culture that routinely uses…

The "2011 Superintendent's Briefing Book" provides comprehensive yet concise overviews of the best thinking available on a wide range of top-priority PreK-12 education concerns. This resource will prove invaluable in making research-based decisions with confidence, and in identifying programs and practices that will improve student achievement.…