In recent years, interest has spiked in data-driven decision making in education--that is, using various types of student data to inform decisions in schools and classrooms. In October 2008, the Council of the Great City Schools and American Institutes for Research (AIR) launched a project funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that focused…

Linking Outcomes to Organizational Planning (LOOP) was initiated during the 1984-85 school year in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District. LOOP was designed to ensure that evaluation, research, and informal findings became part of the instructional planning loop; to provide information to the Superintendent on progress toward priorities…

This article describes the background and rationale for the Convening Process, created and evaluated by the U.S. Department of Education staff, and its relation to other efforts to increase the use of research and evaluation information. (Author/LMO)

This study analyzes the ways in which school boards assess and utilize evaluation data and their attitudes toward testing. Interviews with 27 school board members from 10 districts indicate that board members tend to rely on informal working knowledge over formal information, and on district administrators' judgments. Findings suggest that simple…

The research and development (R&D) projects funded by the Florida Division of Vocational Education are intended to have utility for vocational educators in their efforts to improve vocational education programs and practices. This project was conducted to determine why some R&D products are accepted by potential users while others are not…