Frequently Asked Questions

What is data-driven decision making?
Why use data for decision making in K-12 education?
How does a district decide what data to collect?,/a>
What is a data warehouse?
What are some of the ways in which data reports can be structured?
What common data report formats are most useful to teachers?
What common data report formats are most useful to principals?
What common data report formats are most useful to district personnel?
Why is data-driven decision making so important to No Child Left Behind?
What data is being collected by states and districts?
What are the major barriers to effective use of data indecision making for school districts?

What is data-driven decision making?
Data-driven decision making is the process of making choices based on appropriate analysis of relevant information. School district decision makers are using technology and professional expertise to improve instruction and operations.

Why use data for decision making in K-12 education?
Decisions in school districts have been made according to tradition, instinct, and regulations. More access to better information enables educational professionals to test their assumptions, identify needs, and measure outcomes. Schools are using data-driven decision making to provide more individualized instruction to students, track professional development resources, identify successful instructional strategies, better allocate scarce resources, and communicate better with parents and the community.

How does a district decide what data to collect?
Most districts are data rich. They have too much information in too many places to effectively use it. They have information about student records,student assessment, transportation services, food service, human resources,library automation, student health, special education, and curriculum management, to name a few. The challenge is to integrate these disparate systems and make the information available in timely, easy-to-understand reports so that decision makers can affect student performance.

What is a data warehouse?
A data warehouse is a storage facility integrating sources of vital information about every student and staff member in the school system.Providing easy access to this data is a crucial element of a data warehousing solution. At the same time, much of the information is highly confidential.Finding the right balance between access and security, flexibility and control,is an ongoing challenge for K-12 IT departments.

What are some of the ways in which data reports can be structured?
Reports need to be timely, tied to objectives, and available to people with the responsibility and ability to act on them. Data reports that show data in different ways such as tables, charts, graphs, and trends enable more people to access and understand the information. Most districts create a standard set of reports based on the key questions and indicators identified inthe planning process. If possible reports should include longitudinal data so that teachers, principals, and administrators can compare results over time.

What common data report formats are most useful to teachers?
Web-based systems enable teachers to log-in and view a class or drill down to a student profile or flexible groupings of students. They can view assessment results tied to standards and assessment items. Teachers filter by period, course or NCLB filters such as ethnicity, gender, or second language learners. They have access to current and historical data as well as contact information for student, parents, and email links to other teachers. One district enables teachers to export contact information for mail merges.

What common data report formats are most useful to principals?
Principals use data on attendance, enrollment,student/teacher/parent satisfaction surveys, and test results to assess progress, allocate resources, and create school improvement plans. They look for information that is organized numerically rather than alphabetically,includes objective descriptions of data, visual displays of information, and query tools.

What common data report formats are most useful to district personnel?
District personnel use data to report results to federal and state agencies, most notably NCLB and state assessments. Data also helps district personnel determine the appropriate allocation of district resources,plan professional development, analyze district level interventions to achieve desired results, create school improvement plans, and assess the overall progress toward strategic goals. To use data more effectively in decision making, district personnel need access to data across information systems, for example: linking financial data with student assessments helps to refine resource allocations, connecting human resources with student assessment helps identify professional development needs, etc. The data must be available in both aggregate and disaggregate formats, allowing administrators to drill down by school, department, classroom, student demographics, etc.

Why is data-driven decision making so important to No Child Left Behind?
With the right data at the right time to inform decisions about resources, grouping, and instruction, schools are more likely to meet their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements and comply with NCLB. The first years of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) required school districts to collect more data, in more detail and disaggregate it to show the progress toward achieving state standards. If teachers and administrators are going to be able to keep students from falling behind, they need to know what’s working and what students are learning during the year.

What data is being collected by states and districts?
The State Educational Technology Directors Association(SETDA) created a set of data elements to help state education departments meet the data reporting requirements of NCLB and to generate comparative national data. The data elements are divided into sections based on NCLB requirements.Each section contains key questions, indicators of the answer, and dataelements that can be collected to measure the results. (See the Data Collection Project at www.setda.org.)

What are the major barriers to effective use of data indecision making for school districts?
Lack of training and interoperability are the main barriers to more effective data-driven decision making, according to a survey conducted by Grunwald & Associates on behalf of CoSN in 2004.