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William Clune	Norman Webb

Data-based decision-making is an important tool for educational improvement. Yet, WCER researchers Bill Clune and Norman Webb remind us that making effective use of data is one of the continuing challenges of building capacity in systemic reform. In order to use data as a guide for continuous improvement around coherent goals of student achievement, schools must develop their organizational, technical and analytical capacities.

Effective use of school data requires planning and persistence. Data development and use must become an active part of school planning and improvement processes, and it must become infused and accepted into the school culture and organization.

With funding from the Joyce Foundation, Clune and Webb are working with school and district staff in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to develop the capacity of staff to understand and apply data strategically, using QSP (Quality School Portfolio) software, an analytical and reporting tool developed at UCLA by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST). Once fully integrated into a school's systems, data can be transformed from mere numbers to useful information, and can then contribute to schools' and district knowledge in effective and meaningful ways.

Milwaukee educators involved in the project consistently mention the need to develop a process and the skills to analyze and use data for answering questions, problem-solving, monitoring and decision-making. During the last two years, WCER researchers and the school staff have collaborated in developing analytical models and decision-making processes, collecting and managing data, and analyzing, reporting and applying data.

Clune and Webb have found that using data to support inquiry, to inform schools' instructional mission and continuous improvement requires coordinated changes in many areas- school processes and culture, use of technological tools, data collection and management, and the analytical skills and abilities of school personnel.

The school teams have found that making the needed changes to implement data-based decision making poses difficult, but not insurmountable challenges. With hard work, each school has made progress toward meeting many of the challenges.

For example, one school analyzed multiple measures of individual student data generated at the school site to evaluate or monitor student performance changes in reading, programs, student placement, etc. After reviewing the information, the principal and teacher leadership team decided on a course of action. For the subsequent school year, they reallocated school resources in reading, identified low performing students to receive additional reading resources, and hired two new reading specialists. Team members are tracking these interventions this year to see whether the students' reading performance improved.

Another school began to analyze what staff called "event-based" data-that is, data that refer to specific incidents or actions, rather than to test scores or student demographic variables. Tracking the pattern of events such as discipline referrals and attendance infractions. The principal provided summary information to teacher teams. School staff used these summaries discuss student behavior and related teacher behavior management practices. The data were also used to support decisions about resource allocation. The school hired an additional counselor for the following school year to help students who have difficulties in their lives outside of school, which staff concluded affect student behavior.

Building capacity

Clune and Webb identified six challenges schools face as they build capacity for using data-based decision making :

• Cultivating the desire to transform data into knowledge
• Focusing on a process for planned data use
• Committing to the acquisition of data
• Organizing data management
• Developing analytical capacity
• Strategically applying information and results

Strong leaders who support the local use of data help establish a school culture that not only accepts the use of data but considers data as a source of information that contributes to problem solving and knowledge building. Whether key staff or the school principal provide the leadership, it is essential for a school to gather support, obtain commitment, allocate resources, and identify goals to ensure that its data efforts are a success.

It is important for schools to link their use of data to their school planning and decision-making processes. Such a focused approach saves time and effort and allows for more efficient use of limited data. An approach that aligns data inquiry to school planning and decision-making processes right from the start is more likely to produce answers to specific questions, evidence to support school goals, and information that sheds light on identified problems. Planned and targeted data inquiry helps to keep data analysis on track, as well as ensure that information is fed back into the planning process and that key decision-makers get timely answers to their questions.

Data do not magically appear, ready made, to provide evidence of success and solve all of a school's problems. School staffs struggled to build the internal will, capacity, and organization to make data work for them. They had to learn where to get data, how to manage data, how to ask good questions of the data, how to analyze the data accurately, and how to apply data results appropriately, and ethically.

The final challenge for schools is to learn how to appropriately apply results and make purposeful and ethical use of information for improving teaching and learning. Appropriate and ethical use of data implies that a school has taken the necessary precautions and steps to ensure that data is accurate, valid, and reliable and that the analytical process is complete, equitable, and fair. If schools have followed a continuous improvement process for planning and decision-making, the results will be easily linked back to specific questions, goals, and problems. By focusing the data analysis to target specific issues, schools are poised at the end of the analytical process to make sense of and draw meaning from results. The final step is to share the new information and results with staff to inform school planning and decisions. The results can be used in a variety of ways-to identify progress, explore problems, and target strategies for change, to mention a few. In this manner, schools successfully transform data into information and apply that information to school improvement.

For more information contact Sarah Mason at samason@facstaff.wisc.edu.