This article shares what "Educational Leadership" authors have to say about doing data right, which is the theme of this issue. The following questions are addressed in this article: (1) Are you using data to guide improvement?; (2) Are you looking at the right kinds of data?; (3) Are you using data to motivate students?; and (4) Are you…

All around us are examples of people and organizations with good information making bad decisions. Consider the case of Blockbuster. Less than a decade ago, Blockbuster had 8,000 stores in 17 countries and millions of customers. It was awash in data, including customer surveys that said people disliked going to video stores and hated late fees.…

Educators and policymakers have expressed considerable enthusiasm for engaging students with data. In this article, the authors consider how teachers commonly examine data with their students, and how these practices are likely to affect student motivation. Combining motivation research with their own study of teachers in six middle schools that…

Data-based decision making is all the rage. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2009) has emphatically declared, "I am a deep believer in the power of data to drive our decisions. Data gives us the roadmap to reform. It tells us where we are, where we need to go, and who is most at risk." In the past few years, all 50 states have adopted most or…

This article presents several publications that can help educators hone their skills in using data effectively. These publications point out key measures of school quality, support professional development in data use, suggest action steps for building better data systems, and tackle data and equity issues. These publications include: (1) Good…

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…

Describes how to choose a consultant and what to expect of him, as well as consultee responsibility. (GB)

Multidisciplinary thinking is advocated as a necessary approach to curriculum development in the light of the emergence of a global society, the rate of social change, the information explosion, and new theories about reality. (GW)

Primary purpose of evaluation is to cause educators to look at the process and the product of education and to utilize evaluation data as a corrective tool. (Authors)

Reviews the Council of Chief State School Officers' effort to establish a nationwide system of educational indicators. Suggests the benefits of such a system. (MCG)

Federal money supports many agencies intended to provide information to educators, but because the services are not coordinated, few people use them. A brief summary is provided of some of the educational information resources, along with the titles of some handbooks. (Author/MLF)

Discusses issues involved in disseminating accurate information about AIDS. Public fears derive from misinformation that the disease is transmitted by casual contact. The older student population will become proportionately more affected, and this is the group educators should assist. Includes a bibliography for educators. (CJH)

The National Diffusion Network (NDN) not only alerts educators to exemplary education programs, but also provides inservice training before and after a program adoption. (Author)

Describes the design and operation of an information scanning system to alert school systems about emerging issues in the areas of social, technical, economic, and legislative/regulatory developments and to enable administrators to anticipate and respond to these issues. (MLF)

This article details the content of a recently released report from the Children's Partnership titled "Measuring Digital Opportunity for America's Children: Where We Stand and Where We Go From Here". On the basis of 40 indicators, the report's Digital Opportunity Measuring Stick showed how U.S. children and young adults use information…