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 were pushing data use, they identified two general approaches to involving students in data analysis. Some teachers encouraged a performance orientation, using data to compare individual students and groups with one another in an effort to foster healthy competition; however, the research suggests that such comparisons can actually be demotivating. A better approach, say the authors, was encouraging a mastery orientation by enabling students to use data to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses and to plan improvement. Schoolwide practices are likely to influence which of these two approaches teachers take.