Using over 350 hours of observational data from district-level meetings, we investigate how leaders support their interpretations of problems and proposed solutions during closed-door negotiations around three policy decisions, and how they invoke race, class, and language in the process. District leaders primarily cite constraints from…

Despite a growing body of research on data use in education, there has been relatively little focus on the role of students. This article begins to fill this gap by exploring teacher and administrator reports on engaging students in data use at six middle schools. Even though teachers expressed a belief that involving students in data use would…

Purpose: The use of data for instructional improvement is prevalent in today's educational landscape, yet policies calling for data use may result in significant variation at the school level. The purpose of this paper is to focus on tools and routines as mechanisms of principal influence on data-use professional learning communities (PLCs).…

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…

Coaching has become a central strategy in district and school efforts to build teacher capacity to interpret and respond to student learning data. Despite their popularity, there is limited research on the implementation of these initiatives. This article begins to addresses this gap by examining the elements of a coach's practice that appear…