"Using Education Indicators: A Forum Guide for State and Local Education Agencies" was developed to provide timely and useful information on education indicators, how their collection and use have changed over time, and how agencies use them strategically. Since the publication of the 2005 document "Forum Guide to Education…

Measurement systems give colleges a structure for collecting, sharing, and acting on data. The guidebook and tools presented here help faculty, staff, college leadership, and policymakers understand and use measurement systems--and specifically use data to improve completion rates, close institutional performance gaps, and facilitate economic…

The City University of New York (CUNY) is the largest urban public university system in the United States with approximately 100,000 students enrolled in associate degree programs. Similar to trends nationwide, many associate degree students come to CUNY underprepared for college-level classes and are assigned to take remedial or developmental…

There is a vast amount of research on what goes on in schools, but how can school leaders sort credible findings from dubious claims and use these to make informed decisions that benefit their schools? How can abstract ideas from research be translated into dynamic plans for action? This book is a practical guide to evidence-based school…

This book demonstrates the many ways classroom walkthroughs can be used for continuous, systemic, long-range school improvement. Woven throughout the book are 18 different models of walkthroughs that have been successfully implemented in schools across the country. An effective tool for improving teaching and learning, this book demonstrates that…

This workbook guides a team in reviewing, revising, or replacing an existing professional learning system. The process outlined and the tools included support the team in conducting all aspects of its work, usually done over several months, with continuous progress monitoring and input from research, experts, and constituents. The workbook is…

Turn your school into a student-centered learning environment, where rigor is at the heart of instruction in every classroom. From the bestselling author of "Rigor is Not a Four-Letter Word," Barbara Blackburn, and award-winning educator Ronald Williamson, this comprehensive guide to establishing a schoolwide culture of rigor is for principals and…

Now that federal and state initiatives require school districts to provide job-embedded professional development, the next step is making it happen. This book helps districts define, develop, and implement a systematic inquiry-based process with a laser-like focus on both adult and student learning. This book's inquiry model challenges educators…

Almost nobody, it seems, disputes the importance of effective teachers--including teachers themselves. However, principals actually do none of the things they do when they value something as highly as most people say they value good teachers. By looking at scores on year-end standardized tests by teachers, principals think they have a pretty good…

It is essential that before a school or district begins a classroom visitation program, everybody is clear about what to expect and what their role is to be in the process. The purpose of this article is to establish a typology of classroom visitations that might help schools and districts to achieve that clarity. Implemented well, each of the…

In these times of high-stakes accountability, all professional educators must learn how to gather, analyze, and use data to improve teaching and learning, becoming efficient generators and consumers of data. The intended audiences for this book are school and district administrators and teacher leaders who recognize the need to use data to…

State Education Agencies (SEAs) lead the charge for effective change, impact, and sustainability in the adoption and implementation of programs and practices that promote school completion. Steps taken by state and local education agencies to decrease dropout include (a) collection, analysis, and public reporting of "dropout" rates and related…

In recent years the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township in Indianapolis has been awash in data. In attempts to improve levels of student achievement, the authors collected all manner of statistical details about students and schools and attempted to perform data analysis as part of the school improvement process. The authors were never…

This paper discusses the role that the Office of Institutional Research and Strategic Planning played in providing data support, planning, and cohesiveness as Utah Valley Community College worked to become Utah Valley State College. The two tier model adopted at Utah Valley State College aspires to describe a cost-effective four-year college with…

With real-world examples from actual schools, this book illustrates how to nurture a culture of continuous improvement, meet the needs of individual students, foster an environment of high expectations, and meet the requirements of NCLB. Each component of the Data-Driven Instructional Leadership (DDIS) model represents several branches of…