Research

Ethical and Appropriate Data Use Requires Data Literacy

Data literacy is a critical part of effective teaching, and as the proliferation of data increases, and as parent and public concerns about the safety of data remain, the ethical use of data must be a focus for teachers.  Teachers are the front-line communicators to parents and their communities about education.  But as parents and the public at large express concerns over data use in education, they’re also demonstrating that they don’t fully trust educators to use data in ways that benefit students.  Teachers have a new role to not only explain the value of data to parents and the community but also to demonstrate that they only and always use information in the best interest of students.

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An Analysis of the Licensure Requirements that Pertain to Data Literacy: An Interim Report , Revised

This report documents the work of one component of a larger research effort. The objective of the project is to understand what schools of education are doing to prepare teachers to use data in their practice. The components include a survey to schools of education, a review of selected syllabi, and an analysis of state licensure documents and requirements. This document focuses on the licensure review.

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An Analysis of the Survey of Schools of Education on Use of Data in their Teacher Preparation Programs: An Interim Report

This report documents the work of one component of a larger research effort. The objective of the project is to understand what schools of education are doing to prepare teachers to use data in their practice. The components include a survey to schools of education, a review of selected syllabi, and an analysis of state licensure documents and requirements. This document focuses on the survey analysis.

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Analysis of Syllabi Intending to Prepare Teachers to be Data Literate: An Interim Report

This report documents the work of one component of a larger research effort. The objective of the project is to understand what schools of education are doing to prepare teachers to use data in their practice. The components include a survey to schools of education, a review of selected syllabi, and an analysis of state licensure documents and requirements. This document focuses on the syllabus analysis.

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Preparing Educators to Effectively Use Student Data Systems

There are many considerations in preparing educators to use data systems, a necessary component of effective data use. This paper discusses key issues facing districts that are implementing data systems and preparing educators to use them.

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Knowledge Management for Educational Information Systems: What is the State of the Field?

This article explores the application of Knowledge Management techniques to education information systems—particularly in support of systemic reform efforts.

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Data Use in the Classroom: The Challenges of Implementing Data-Based Decision Making at the School Level

This paper examines the issues that school-level staff encounter when attempting to implement data-based decision-making reform. The paper also recommends professional development programs that address gaps in traditional principal and teacher training.

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After the Test: Closing the Achievement Gap With Data

In order to identify effective school-level policies and strategies for closing the achievement gap within a school, the authors surveyed 32 K-8 schools on their strategies. They compared responses from schools with narrowing gaps and schools with widening gaps.

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Using Test-Score Data in the Classroom

This paper summarizes survey and interview results of elementary and middle school principals and teachers on the formats in which they received test data, their opinions about the data quality, the ways they used these data, and conditions that hindered or promoted effective use.

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All in the Palm of Your Hand: Lessons From One School’s First Steps with Handheld Technology for Literacy Assessments

This report chronicles and summarizes a school’s exploration of new technology for literacy assessments as part of a pilot study. The study explored the use of new digital technology and assessment software on teachers’ abilities to use data to inform teaching and learning.

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Supporting Teachers’ Data-Driven Instructional Conversations: An Environmental Scan of Reading First and STEP Literacy Assessments, Data Visualizations, and Assumptions About Conversations That Matter

This report examines the instructional conversations supported by Reading First assessments and data visualizations, and how the assessments and visualizations can make a difference for beginning readers.

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Data-Informed Leadership in Education

The report is intended to understand common practices and emerging strategies around data-informed leadership. It lays the groundwork for further study and practical experimentation by state, district, and school leaders and reformers.

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Cutting Through the “Data-Driven” Mantra: Different Conceptions of Data-Driven Decision Making

This paper examines the different ways in which educators use data to make decisions about teaching and learning. The authors investigate the different ways in which educators understand the concept of data-driven decision making (DDDM), the factors that enable or constrain DDDM, and associated implications for policy and practice.

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The New Instructional Leadership: Creating Data-Driven Instructional Systems in Schools

This paper discusses how local school leaders build data-driven instructional systems in a six-step cycle by developing new programs and using existing school functions to create an information flow through a school. The paper also presents a theoretical and analytic framework to understand systems that local school leaders create to develop a data-driven instructional system.

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Formative Feedback Systems and the New Instructional Leadership

The authors of this resource argue that school capacity to use data consists largely of the ability to generate and make good use of information on the core processes of teaching and learning. They also describe the processes that leaders and teachers coordinate to develop this capacity.

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Over-the-Counter Data’s Impact on Educators’ Data Analysis Accuracy

This experimental, quantitative study explores the inclusion of supports in data systems and their reports. Respondents’ data analyses were found to be 307% more accurate when a report footer was present, 205% more accurate when an abstract was present, and 273% more accurate when an interpretation guide was present. These findings and others were significant and fill a void in field literature.

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Supporting a Culture of Data Use: Interview with Jeffrey Wayman

Jeffrey Wayman describes the importance of providing supports to encourage teachers to use data. Schools can have a data facilitator or another specified person whose job it is to help with data use.

This position must be well defined and well structured. He states that ongoing collaboration and professional development are key ways to support the use of data and to build capacity within the school and district.

For a full transcript of the interview, click here.

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Supporting Teachers in Understanding and Using Data: Interview with Ellen Mandinach

Ellen Mandinach emphasizes the importance of professional development to help teachers learn how to use data to apply it to instructional decision making. She explains that professional development needs to be aligned with the school’s goals and needs. It also needs to be provided close to the time that teachers will examine data and be ongoing.

For a full transcript of the interview, click here.

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Collaborative Structures for Data Use: Interview with Richard Halverson

Richard Halverson describes how schools need to integrate a data plan within the school’s overall school improvement plan. A data plan can provide intermittent goals and specific steps needed to reach goals. Schools should consider data at multiple levels, from state assessment data to classroom and student-level data.

Additionally, a data team can facilitate implementation of the plan, provide leadership to change the school’s culture, and guide a coordinated approach to systematic data use to support instructional decision making.

For a full transcript of the interview, click here.

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Helping Students Gain Ownership Over Their Learning: Interview with Jonathan Supovitz

Jonathan Supovitz states that when students examine their own data, they gain ownership and a sense of control over their learning. As part of teaching students to examine their data, teachers need to provide quality feedback that is timely, specific, and easy to understand. Feedback should include actions needed to improve. Additionally, it is helpful to provide students with tools to analyze their data, such as charts and rubrics.

For a full transcript of the interview, click here.

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Data-Driven Instructional Decision Making: Interview with Laura Hamilton

Laura Hamilton explains the five recommended practices and offers considerations for implementation of the practices. For a full transcript of the interview, click here.

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Technology to Support Next-Generation Classroom Formative Assessment for Learning

This paper focuses on the ways that technologies can support effective formative assessment practices, including planning, implementing, and adjusting classroom instruction. The paper also presents a vignette to illustrate some of the ways teachers can take advantage of technology to plan, implement, and refine their formative assessment practices.

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Assessment for Learning: What Policymakers Should Know About Formative Assessment

Formative assessment in the classroom is a process intended to reveal not just what students are learning, but how they are learning and what might be impeding their understanding. Assessment results help teachers tailor subsequent instruction and help students get a clearer picture of what they need to do to advance their own learning.

This policy brief highlights the formative component of next-generation assessment systems and makes recommendations for state and federal policymakers.

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Professional Development on Formative Assessment: Insights From Research and Practice

Formative assessment is a key component in next-generation assessment systems. This paper outlines how different programs and studies have responded to educators’ need for professional development on formative assessment.

The authors address the major issues in the design and implementation of professional development on formative assessment and make recommendations for future efforts.

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Results: The Key to Renewal

The authors of this resource argue that the key to school renewal is an emphasis on results and on the conditions that favor them. More specifically, regular, even short-term, results are the key to long-term renewal.

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Use of Education Data at the Local Level: From Accountability to Instructional Improvement

This report builds on the picture of local practices in implementing data-driven decision making. It does so by presenting data from a national district survey as well as from site visits conducted at 36 schools in 12 districts.

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Understanding Data Use Practice Among Teachers: The Contribution of Micro-Process Studies

Research on how teachers and others use data to make decisions is sparse. This paper argues for a more extensive program of research.

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Teachers’ Ability to Use Data to Inform Instruction: Challenges and Supports

This report describes an exploratory sub-study on teachers’ thinking about data conducted in conjunction with the larger Study of Education Data Systems and Decision Making data collection. The report also discusses the implications of the sub-study findings for teacher preparation and support.

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Lessons Learned in Using Data to Support School Inquiry and Continuous Improvement: Final Report to the Stuart Foundation

This paper uses case studies to address how schools can use assessment and accountability to improve education for all students, as well as how schools can use data to break the cycle of poor student performance and academic failure.

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Making Sense of Test-Based Accountability in Education

This book is intended to help readers better understand issues around test-based accountability and make practical decisions about which tests to select and how to use test score results.

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Creating a System for Data-Driven Decision Making: Applying a Principal-Agent Framework

This article aims to improve understanding of data-driven decision-making strategies that are initiated at the district or system level. Findings suggest that educators at the school level need systemic support and adequate decision-making autonomy.

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Mapping a Course for Improved Student Learning: How Innovative Schools Systematically Use Data to Guide Improvement

This paper examines how innovative schools are using a variety of student performance data to improve instruction and the school organization’s support for instructional improvement. Based on the examination, the authors developed a theory of systematic school data use.

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A Systemic View of Implementing Data Literacy into Educator Preparation

This article explores the complex issues around the growing need for teaching data-driven decision making in school of education programs.

This article takes a systemic perspective to examine what schools of education, professional credentialing organizations, state departments of education and their licensing agencies, and professional development providers can do to prepare and train the nation’s educators to use data effectively to make instructional, administrative, policy, and other decisions.

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The Roles and Practices of Student Services Staff as Data-Driven Instructional Leaders

This paper explores the ways in which school leaders are turning to student services staff as local experts in data analysis and enlisting their assistance in meeting the demands of high-stakes accountability.

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The Use of Interim Assessment Data in Urban Schools: Links Among Data Use Practices and Student Achievement

This abstract examines the empirical relationships between teacher- and school-level data use and student achievement in mathematics and reading. By examining the extent to which certain data-use practices are related to student achievement, this study expands on the body of literature on the use of assessments to drive instructional improvement.

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Achieving with Data: How High-Performing School Systems Use Data to Improve Instruction for Elementary Students

This report captures the work of four school systems identified as leaders in data-driven decision making. These systems—traditional public school districts and two charter management organizations—have records of improving student achievement over time.

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Data Use in Practice: Examples from the School Level

This paper describes the results of case studies in six Milwaukee Public Schools on work performed around using data to inform decision-making. Research questions address what schools and teachers need to best use data to inform instruction.

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Below the Bubble: “Educational Triage” and the Texas Accountability System

This article seeks to explain an urban elementary school’s response to the Texas Accountability System. The findings indicate that teachers sought to create the appearance of test score improvement by using a constellation of “educational triage” practices, focusing on the “bubble kids” and how these students affected the school’s accountability rating.

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Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment

This article points to evidence showing that formative assessment is an essential component of classroom work and that its development can raise standards of achievement. The authors argue that there is no other way of raising standards for which such a strong prima facie case can be made.

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Achieving a Wealth of Riches: Delivering on the Promise of Data to Transform Teaching and Learning

This brief addresses why using data represents a significant shift for most teachers in how they perform their jobs; explains the importance of using multiple types of data to affect learning; details the infrastructure necessary to encourage teachers’ use of data; and provides federal policy recommendations.

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Data for School Improvement: Factors for Designing Effective Information Systems to Support Decision-Making in Schools

The authors draw on business and organizational research on Management Information Systems to introduce a theoretical framework to describe the process of data-driven decision making in schools. The authors discuss the potential of new technologies and new ways of analysis, as well as critical factors for developing and implementing effective information systems for schools.

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Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making

This guide offers evidence-based recommendations for use by educators and education administrators to create the organizational conditions necessary to make decisions using student achievement data.

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Understanding How Teachers Use Student Assessment Data

This memo provides information for educators and researchers who want to understand how teachers use data about student performance. It summarizes a review of research literature and describes the methods Regional Educational Laboratory West staff used to search the literature.

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Making Sense of Data-Driven Decision Making in Education

This paper seeks to clarify the ways in which multiple types of data are being used in schools and districts. By bringing together information gathered from large, representative samples of educators at the district, school, and classroom levels in a variety of contexts, this paper suggests a research agenda to advance the field.

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