Creating continuously improving education systems could be the antidote to one-off education reforms that come and go with little to show for the effort. What distinguishes continuous improvement from other reform strategies is its focus on the underlying architecture of the system that is producing undesirable outcomes (e.g., low graduation…

This article discusses five generally accepted reasons to use data as a part of an educator's ongoing professional practice. Of course, there are many other more specific reasons one might look at data, but these five cover the overarching need in an educational setting. The five major purposes for using data are: (1) To enhance understanding and…

Within an RtI problem-solving context, assessment and decision making generally center around the tasks of problem identification, problem analysis, progress monitoring, and program evaluation. We use this framework to discuss the current state of the literature regarding curriculum based measurement, its technical properties, and its utility for…