With the need to meet a set of higher accountability standards such as Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards and the AYP benchmarks of the NCLB Act, for example, school principals are faced with the knowledge that they play a vital role in school effectiveness as well as teacher retention, parent participation, and…

"Building Institutional Capacity for Data-Informed Decision Making" is the third installment of the Cutting Edge series, which aims to help colleges engage faculty, scale successful interventions, and create a strong culture of evidence through use of data to strengthen their institutional change and student success efforts. Though the…

Three principal factors supported our decision to participate in the piloting of the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System (PVAAS). First, participants needed to have or secure electronic student assessment data. As a very data-oriented school district, we had over five years of longitudinal student data stored electronically for use in our…