This article seeks to answer the following questions: (1) What is keeping educators from moving districts and schools to high-performing data cultures? and (2) What vital role does leadership play? Three years ago, as a senior designer and facilitator, Jennifer Unger developed a data leadership academy to address challenges for leaders, whether…

With increased teacher accountability and decreased funding, effective professional learning is more critical than ever. Teachers and educational leaders need to be fully and continuously supported in their professional growth around the changes they face, such as implementing Common Core, learning to interpret and use student data, and supporting…

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…

In this article, the author highlights the methodology, analysis, findings, and limitations of Marsh, J., Bertrand, M., & Huguet, A. (2015), "Using data to alter instructional practice: The mediating role of coaches and professional learning communities," "Teachers College Record," 117(4), 1-40. This exploratory research…

Teachers and school leaders have been pressed to use data over the last few decades, and that pressure is increasing. Yet while data use has become a popular term among educators and politicians, evidence demonstrates that teachers and school leaders still struggle with making sense of data in the service of improved learning outcomes. To do this…

Learning Forward's Data standard advocates using data from a variety of sources and types--including student, educator, and system data--to plan, assess, and evaluate professional learning. This presents several challenges, beginning with the emphasis on a variety of sources and types. The pressures of No Child Left Behind have focused American…

In September 2009, the Detroit public school now known as Dixon Educational Learning Academy was best described by terms too often used to characterize persistently low-performing urban schools--frequent leadership turnover, demoralized staff, student violence, poor attendance, a physical plant in horrendous shape, episodic and irrelevant…

Welcome to the West Valley School District in eastern Washington. Home to almost 4,000 students, West Valley made a public commitment more than seven years ago that all students would graduate with the option to attend college. This daunting goal--made even more so by the fact that almost half of the district's high school students come from…

Monte Vista Elementary School is one of 24 K-5 elementary schools in Las Cruces Public Schools, an urban district in southern New Mexico. The school's 450 students reflect the diversity of its Southwestern community: 75% Hispanic, 17% English language learners, and 68% free or reduced lunch, thus qualifying Monte Vista as a Title I school. Monte…

While teachers face new expectations for student learning and more equitable educational outcomes, instruction and assessment remain rooted in traditional approaches that are largely inequitable, culturally irrelevant, and intellectually disengaging, contributing to gaps in academic achievement across student groups (Darling-Hammond, 2010; King…

Consistent, excellent teaching is the single greatest factor in improving student achievement over time. School leadership is the second. Excellent teaching and strong leadership require deliberate, ongoing professional learning. In working with high-poverty school systems over time, the following basics emerge: (1) time; (2) content; (3)…

Throughout the past two decades, Boston Public Schools has seen strong, steady improvement, recently demonstrated through student gains on NAEP's Trial Urban District Assessment in math and recognized through the award of the 2006 Broad Prize for Urban Education. Teacher leaders have played an important role in Boston's improvement. As team…

Data-driven decision making is the process of using data to inform decisions to improve teaching and learning. Schools typically engage in two kinds of data-driven decision making--at the school level and at the classroom level. The first leads to the second. In this article, the author describes how Marylin Avenue Elementary School successfully…

Transforming an entire district from one that is satisfied with being academically good enough into one keenly focused on improved student performance requires overhaul that reaches from end to end, from building to building, from bottom to top. Leaders in Birdville Independent School District in Fort Worth, Texas, learned that applying five…

Administrators at Findlay City Schools had been researching methods to improve student achievement. District administrators decided to work to form professional learning communities to focus on improved student learning. Findlay High School had recently added a freshman wing to help students transition to high school and allow teachers to focus on…