Using Data to Improve Student Achievement
This online staff development package was developed for Maryland school leaders and staff but has much to offer any principal or school team ready to lead school improvement efforts through data-driven instructional decisions. Four modules focus on the competencies principals need to use data effectively to improve student achievement. Module 3, "Using School Data to Clarify and Address Your Problem," and Module 4, "Using Classroom Data to Monitor Individual Student Progress," are general enough to help principals and teachers in any state think more deeply about the uses of data. You'll find many sample documents, interviews (some with sound clips), worksheets, data collection templates, and more. This program is part of Maryland's outstanding school improvement website - truly a national model of what's possible online.

Also see:
School Improvement in Maryland: Analyzing and Using Data

Find "Hot Data" At Practitioners Circle
The "Practitioners Circle" at the National Center for Education Statistics website features statistical information, findings from research, and other information for teachers, parents, & administrators. You'll find the latest NCES releases, and updates "as data emerge on hot issues." Each month, the page features an on-going NCES program. It's a user-friendly page with nice graphics and easy-to-access data.

Seize the Data!
Ignoring the hard realities that education statistics often present does a tremendous disservice to our children, says Gary Hoachlander in this Education Week article (10/28/98). Hoachlander, CEO of the education think-tank MPR, offers his thoughts about how school communities can "systematically marshal valid, reliable, and trustworthy data.

School-Based Data Analyst
"Because data abound, schools must become data savvy." A school district in Northglenn, Colorado took this truism to heart by creating supplements for teachers willing to become school-based data analysts "to strengthen school improvement efforts and to focus school-based decision making on student learning." (Journal of Staff Development, Winter 2000)

Test Data Teachers Would Love To Have
"Imagine," says this article in Principal Leadership ("Formative Assessments: Test to Teach," January 2001), that "teachers in your school receive a report on their students three times a year, an analysis of each student's reading, writing, and math skills." What's more, the school-developed assessments "would be scored against rubrics the staff has written using state standards and the school's expectations for good work. The result: reliable, comparable, timely assessment data that can really improve instruction tomorrow -- in their classrooms and across the school."

Also see:
Education Trust's state-by-state database of high-performing, high-poverty schools

Closing The Achievement Gap
The achievement gap that separates low-income and minority youngsters from other young Americans is widening again, says Education Trust president Kati Haycock, and "if we don't get the numbers out on the table and talk about them, we're never going to close the gap once and for all." But in this article in Educational Leadership (March 2001), Haycock worries "about how many people head into discussions without accurate data. And I worry even more about how many education leaders have antiquated-and downright wrong-notions about the whys beneath the achievement gap."

Accountability Toolbox
The Annenberg Institute's Toolbox for Accountability offers practical approaches that can help gauge the progress your school is making to improve student achievement. Each "drawer" within the Toolbox offers descriptions, examples, and specific in-school experiences to guide the many members of a school's community.

Using Data to Improve Student Learning
Subtitled "A Planning, Implementation and Evaluation Guide for Continuous School Improvement," The School Portfolio Toolkit from Education for the Future is a book and compact disk (CD) that includes over 300 tools, strategies, templates, and examples for use in building school portfolios and working with staffs. This link leads to a case-studies page at the Education for the Future website where you can read stories about data driven school improvement in an elementary, a middle and a high school and in rural, urban, and suburban settings.

Data Driven Decisions to Improve Results
Mike Schmoker's books, videos and workshops about data-driven decisionmaking are well known in the education community. Schmoker, who is associated with the Center for Performance Assessment, is the author of the ASCD book Results: the Key to Continuous School Improvement (2nd Edition, 2000) and The Results Fieldbook: Practical Strategies from Dramatically Improved Schools (2001). This link leads to more information at the ASCD site.

Gathering Information for Informed Decisions
This chapter from WestEd's Research-Based Strategies to Achieve High Standards discusses these key steps: Developing a plan for assessing your school's needs; determining the scope of the needs assessment; developing guiding questions to examine each element; identifying sources of information; collecting and organizing your data; analyzing and summarizing your data, and developing goals.

NSDC Library: Data-Driven Decisionmaking
This page at the online library of the National Staff Development Council offers more than a dozen articles on using data, including "The Numbers Game: Measuring Progress by Analyzing Data." Order a paper copy to get all of the accompanying "tools" worksheets.

Digging into the Data
Consultant Jan O'Neill describes a school where teacher teams are using data to set specific goals "that are strategic, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and timebound -SMART." She includes an example of an achievement gap analysis tool and a tree diagram demonstrating what a data-driven reading goal might look like.

Turning Data into Knowledge
The Quality School Portfolio, developed by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), can transform mere numbers into useful information that allows school staffs to understand and apply data strategically. This story from the Wisconsin Center for Education Research describes how two Center staff members are working with the Milwaukee Public Schools to maximize the QSP's potential. [PDF file-download WCER Highlights (Winter 2001-02) Vol. 13, No. 4.]

Removing the Mask of Averages
Five years ago, more than 86 percent of students at Houston's Lanier Middle School in Houston passed state tests, earning the school an "acceptable" rating under the state's accountability system. But when the faculty looked more closely at the school's results, they realized that their overall performance masked wide differences in achievement. This story in the Annenberg Challenge Journal (Winter 2001-02) describes how schools across the US are removing the "mask" of test score averages and using a variety of data to isolate and address achievement gaps.

The Principal as Catalyst
Becky Burnette, principal of a K-5 elementary school in rural Virginia, describes how her "doing okay" school became a powerful professional learning community that is data-driven and focused on student results. "The principal's challenge," she says in this Journal of Staff Development article (Winter 2002), "is not persuading staff of the benefits of an initiative, but helping them experience those benefits." Action is followed by understanding, then by competence, and then by commitment, Burnette says. If you doubt that, read what happened at Boones Mill Elementary. (PDF file.)

Data-Driven Administrators
Many school leaders make decisions about instructional leadership with intuition and by "shooting from the hip." All too often, the decision-making process fails to include data collection and analysis. Theodore Creighton, a former principal and superintendent, shares insights about how central-office administrators and principals can improve their understanding of data analysis and use it to improve teaching and learning. (School Administrator, April 2001.)

Using Data Collaboratively
The Collaborative Assessment Conference, developed by Harvard's Project Zero, can be used for a variety of purposes, including translating samples of student work into data than can help teachers explore the strengths and needs of a particular child or group of children. This page at Annenberg's Looking at Student Work website describes the conference process and models a "virtual" session featuring a elementary school writing sample. There's also a short case study describing how CAC is used in a middle school.

Action Research to Narrow Achievement Gaps (rubric)
The Motivational Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching (Ginsberg & Wlodkowski, 2000) helps schools focus on teaching, learning, and equity. Data-in-a-Day, an action research approach, uses the framework to help teachers take a snapshot of what teaching and learning look like in their school. By disaggregating and examining the data, staff can begin planning for improvements to eliminate differences in achievement among student groups. The PDF article "By the Numbers" (Journal of Staff Development, Spring 2001) describes the self-study process. A companion file includes the Data-in-a-Day rubric.

New Teachers Struggle With Student Assessment
A recent study of the new teacher performance and turnover by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA) finds that the greatest weakness of third-year teachers is interpreting and using student data. "Assessment of student progress is the area in which these novice teachers are in greatest need of professional development," the report for the Governor's Commission on Teacher Quality concludes.

A Variety of Data to Assess Student Growth
The George Lucas Educational Foundation website has assembled a great package of articles, digital videos, and other resources (including a research summary) supporting the contention of Grant Wiggins and others that assessment and learning are "two sides of the same coin," not separate and distinct activities. The school profiles and other materials in this Assessment for Understanding collection can inspire schools to move beyond standardized test results as they think about data-driven school improvement.