"Big data" prompts a whole lexicon of terms--data flow; analytics; data mining; data science; smart you name it (cars, houses, cities, wearables, etc.); algorithms; learning analytics; predictive analytics; data aggregation; data dashboards; digital tracks; and big data brokers. New terms are being coined frequently. Are we paying…

Data is critical, but data has not always lead to success. If data is not communicated clearly, the results can be disastrous. Design lets us communicate data so it can be understood. Dr. Rankin believes that "when we're fluent in visualizing our ideas, we can communicate them across global boundaries, across spoken language barriers, and…

In this book, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart helps teachers and administrators understand the critical elements and nuances of assessment data and how that information can best be used to inform improvement efforts in the school or district. Readers will learn: (1) What different kinds of data can--and cannot--tell us about student…

This tool and its supporting resources are intended to help education leaders understand and assess equitable access data to support a root-cause analysis and, ultimately, draft a State Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators. The activities in this tool introduce metrics, address staff capacity for analyzing equitable access data,…

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…

Recognizing the need for information in public education, Congress mandated in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that all states create and disseminate annual school performance report cards. A decade after NCLB passed, school report cards are widely available for nearly every school in the country. As the amount of school performance data…

Teachers in the Federal Way (Wash.) Public Schools had no shortage of student data. Standardized test scores, unit tests, and report card grades were as familiar to educators as reading, writing, and arithmetic. With the onset of statewide testing in the 1990s, data analysis was expanded to cover a multitude of state learning goals in grades 4, 7,…

Never before has the link between a college education and postgraduate job prospects been more important. College graduates are employed more often and, on average, earn significantly more than those without college degrees. During recent years, as students have moved into a challenging job market, a college education has remained the most…

Education data are growing in quantity, quality, and value. When appropriately used to guide action, data can be a powerful tool for improving school operations, teaching, and learning. Education stakeholders who possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to appropriately access, analyze, and interpret data will be able to use data to take…

This document presents an interactive visual guide that explains what data are, how they help, and what people can do with them. It also offers ways to enact statewide policies that support effective data use.

Faced with the need to create a competitive workforce and improve the quality of our education system, states are pursuing policy agendas to better prepare students for postsecondary education and careers. To inform these agendas, statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDSs) have become an invaluable asset and serve as a tool to help states answer…

Despite repeated calls for educators to get more instructional mileage out of the assessment data they have at hand, two deterrents typically stand in the way of most educators' effective use of test data. First, there's a missing "realization", and second, there's a missing "skill". Educators who possess both this realization and this skill will…

Data can serve as a powerful tool to ensure equity for students: if educators examine data through the lens of social justice, they will reveal success stories and wounds. At the author's former school, Nipher Middle School in Saint Louis, Missouri, the wounds of previous data-driven decisions were real. Using a social justice lens to examine…

This article discusses how amusing mistakes can make for serious language instruction. The notion that close analysis of language errors can yield insight into how one thinks and learns seems fundamentally obvious. Yet until relatively recently, language errors were primarily treated as indicators of learner deficiency rather than opportunities to…

America brims with education data and these days it seems everyone in education claims to be guided by data. In this book, leaders and scholars map the landscape of data providers and users and explores why what is supplied by the former but frequently fails to meet the needs of the latter. It documents the barriers to collecting good information,…