Determining whether a state's young people are on track for a life of opportunity is a difficult task for governors and state leaders. States can be both awash in data and unable to easily access and use that data to inform policy. State longitudinal data systems that meaningfully connect workforce, higher education, K-12, and early childhood…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine the data conversation moves enacted by leaders and to bridge organizational leadership for equity and data-informed decision making to practice. I argue that data discussion moves with the purpose of improving equity and learning must reflect core tenets of organizational leadership for…

Joseph P. McDonald reports findings from a study of nine poverty-impacted schools in New York City striving to more effectively use student performance data in teaching. The study was one of 13 studies of data use at the classroom level across the United States funded by the Spencer Foundation -- an effort intended to fill a serious gap in…

Over the past decade, chronic absence has gone from being a virtually unknown concept to a national education metric that provides every school in the nation with critical data on how many students are missing so many days of school it jeopardizes their academic success. The inclusion of chronic absence in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was…

At an elementary school in the northeastern region of the United States elementary teachers struggled with using data to make instructional decisions. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore elementary teachers' perceptions about how their teaching experiences prepared them to use data to make lesson decisions. The…

The contribution of data use in schools has been proven via visible changes in policy and practice in schools (instrumental effects), changes in practitioners learning or cognition (conceptual effects) and changes in opinions or attitudes regarding teaching or policy-making (symbolic effects). Nevertheless, limited research is available on the…

In New Mexico's Rio Rancho school district, students and educators at Puesta del Sol Elementary take inspiration from Spirit the Eagle's ability to soar. The mascot, who presides over approximately 750 students and 100 staff members, embodies the vision and tenaciousness that lifted the suburban Albuquerque school from a disappointing state report…

This case discusses early work to implement the Common Core State Standards at a fictitious school in Florida. The case is designed to support students' efforts to use school accountability data for inquiry and to conceptualize change in schools where previous leaders' efforts were not successful. Shell Elementary is an exurban school that serves…

Purpose: Data use cultures in schools determine data use practices. Such cultures can be muted by powerful macro accountability and organizational learning cultures. Further, strong equity-oriented data use cultures are challenging to establish. The purpose of this paper is to engage these cultural tensions. Design/methodology/approach: The data…

Research considers collaboration to be a significant factor in terms of how teachers use data to improve their practice. Nevertheless, the effects of teacher collaboration with regard to teachers' individual data use has remained largely underexplored. Moreover, little attention has been paid to the interplay between collaboration and the personal…

Stepstone's educational leaders knew they needed a research-based assessment to support differentiation and track performance against rigorous state standards. They chose computer adaptive MAP® Growth™ K-2 to keep the team's mix of face-to-face and technology-based instruction focused on student learning and growth. MAP Growth K-2 reinforces…

Although there is a strong legislative base and perceived efficacy for multidisciplinary team decision making, limited evidence supports its effectiveness or consistency of implementation in practice. In recent research, we used the Decision Observation, Recording, and Analysis (DORA) tool to document activities and adult behaviors during positive…

Northwestern New Mexico is widely known as the Four Corners region, and for locals, it is also known as the Checkerboard area--a patchwork of sections owned by the federal government, private citizens, and the Navajo reservation. Oil and gas fields are spread out along the arid mesas, but below is fertile farmland, irrigated by the San Juan River.…

Although much has been written about the potential benefits of effective data use in schools, considerably less attention has been paid to how schools make sense of the data generated from performance-based accountability measures. This article explores schools' usage of state test data, the intensity of data use, and the perceived utility of…

A recent trend in data-informed continuous improvement efforts is the practice of student-involved data use (SIDU), wherein teachers guide students in tracking and analyzing their own learning data. However, as SIDU is a newer emphasis in educational data use, research is scarce as to how teachers (preservice or veteran) develop the knowledge and…