Teachers' quests for more data-based planning, problem solving, and decision making often stumble against limited capacities for engaging in thoughtful interactions, with groups typically lacking process tools, collaborative communication skills, and reflective habits. This article presents a three-phase model for guiding data-driven dialogue in…

Getting answers to questions about schools and student learning requires that educators know how to collect, analyze, and interpret data. Six critical steps in this process include: posing questions, establishing judgment criteria, making a plan, gathering data, analyzing data, and interpreting results. These steps can serve as a beginning guide…

Presents a model to help schools pose and answer data-based questions about teaching and learning, describing different types of data that educators can use to piece together pictures of their schools (e.g., student learning statistics, demographic data, and school process data) and discussing how educators can cross data from different categories…

Several Colorado schools hired data analysts to help with school improvement efforts. The analysts are teachers who participate on school leadership teams and who support school action research teams. They collect and organize baseline data, help teams measure results of proposed changes, and evaluate results after implementation. Because they are…

This year's winners of the U.S. Department of Education's Model Professional Development Awards exemplify schools and districts where everyone's job is to learn. In these models, time and resources are spent on teacher-run institutes, data analysis and collection, peer coaching, curriculum writing, collaborative lesson planning, examining student…

Provides examples of schools and districts nationwide that use data-based decision making effectively to enhance beginning teacher induction, multi-age reading classes, literacy education, tracking of student achievement, ongoing staff development, and school discipline efforts. The programs share a commitment to putting data at the center of…