January/February 2008

Is Your School Ready to Become "Data Wise"?

If you are wondering whether your school is ready to use student data to improve teaching and learning, you may want to consider four key questions:

1. Is our principal committed to becoming a “Data Wise” leader?
For the Data Wise improvement process to work successfully at the school level, it is essential that the principal be on board. If you are the principal, this means that you must commit to building a culture based on trust, where teachers feel comfortable admitting what they don’t know and confident that they will be supported as they strive to improve their practice. If you are a teacher, coach, or administrator, the first step toward bringing your principal on board may be to discuss how the effective use of data might improve teaching and learning in your school.

2. Is there time for teachers to work collaboratively?
Teachers need time to engage regularly in conversations with colleagues about a wide range of data sources. Whether you rearrange your school schedule to ensure that teachers have ample common planning time or rethink the way you use existing common time, you’ll want to be sure that the insights arising in small group meetings can be shared among your entire staff.

3. Is there someone besides the principal who can oversee data management?
To make collaborative time most effective, it is critical that someone at your school—ideally not the principal—take responsibility for managing the data and ensuring that it is shared with teachers in a way that draws them into the ¬conversation. For many schools, freeing up a teacher or administrator to work part-time for a year to create a system for collecting, analyzing, and discussing data is an investment that pays off for years to come.

4. Is there professional support for improving instruction?
Finally, if you want all your data work to translate into real changes in classroom practice, it is important to think ahead about how teachers will gain access to high-quality professional development, whether from within or outside the current school staff.

Data Wise in Action, edited by Kathryn Parker Boudett and Jennifer L. Steele (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2007), $29.95. To order, call 1-888-437-1437 or visit harvardeducationpress.org.