When school and district administrators are empowered to lead a culture of data use, students do better. As states focus on improving overall school quality and ensuring success for all students, they need a workforce of school and district administrators who are equipped to use data to continuously improve. State leaders are uniquely positioned…

Under both No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act, school leaders have been mandated to employ data-driven decision-making (DDDM) to diagnose student needs, implement targeted supports, and design school improvements. However, district administrators tasked with developing principals' DDDM capacity face a tough road. The authors…

For many districts, evaluation is an afterthought to implementing a new initiative. Educators participate in professional learning experiences, apply what they learn to their practice, and then, at some point, school and district staff begin wondering if the initiative is making a difference. Then they scramble for nuggets of data that provide any…

Data utilization is a key component of school improvement as data can be used to enhance student achievement both systematically and on an individual student level. Through systemically analyzing multiple sources of data, educators can make informed and knowledgeable school improvement decisions. In order to effectively make data-drive decisions…

This chapter details the process the University of Michigan developed to build institutional capacity for learning analytics. A symposium series, faculty task force, fellows program, research grants, and other initiatives are discussed, with lessons learned for future efforts and how other institutions might adapt such efforts to spur cultural…

The Teacher Data Use Survey can be used to query teachers, administrators, and instructional support staff about how teachers use data to support instruction, their attitudes toward data, and the supports that help teachers use data. This guide provides step-by-step instructions to help district and school planners implement the survey. The…

Professional Learning Communities are an important means toward the goal of improving schools so that students can learn at high levels. Professional Learning Communities, when well-implemented, have a laser-focus on learning, work collaboratively, and hold themselves accountable for results. In this article, the central concept of…

Background: Institutions of higher education, specifically schools of education, should play a pivotal role in supporting educators' development of data literacy for teaching. While novice teachers are often prepared to use test-based assessment data, they learn these experiences in isolated courses that do not connect to instruction or school…

Through extensive research, the Foundation has identified the most critical levers for success in the classroom -- high standards, high-quality feedback, and effective tools -- and worked with teachers to develop, test, and strengthen them. This report describes what we know about these factors, why they are important, and what we need to learn,…

This article is an excerpt from "A Playbook for Professional Learning: Putting the Standards Into Action" (Learning Forward, 2012). Written by Learning Forward Executive Director Stephanie Hirsh and Scholar Laureate Shirley Hord, "A Playbook for Professional Learning" provides those who work in professional learning with readily accessible…

Developing teachers' knowledge about assessing English language learners (ELLs) is critical for achieving intended policy outcomes of improving teaching under Race to the Top policy and Common Core State Standards. In addition to teachers' expressed concerns about teaching Common Core State Standards to ELLs in a national survey…

As one of only six states receiving a federal Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy grant, Pennsylvania has designed and implemented an innovative program that focuses on improved instruction and interventions to ensure every student is literate and graduates from high school ready for college and a career. This report describes Pennsylvania's…

Many have proposed the creation of a practitioner knowledge base as a foundation for the continuous improvement of teaching. In this article, we discuss the promise, and the challenges, involved in the creation and use of such a knowledge base. We begin by reflecting on the difficulties of changing teaching, a cultural and contextual activity. We…

During the 2002-2003 academic year, six roundtables were held to explore uses of the data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) for improvement of student learning. This paper describes the roundtable discussion held in October 2002 at the Professional Organizational Development conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Thirteen faculty…

For one college teacher, the experience of reading "Information Literacy; Revolution in the Library" revealed a new and informative pattern in learning and teaching. This article examines information literacy and instructional development, classroom application, and student services. (Author/MSE)