The Data Culture Framework is a high-level guide designed for institutional leaders who want to create and sustain an effective data culture on campus. The Framework offers a set of practices designed to help institutions of higher education create and maintain an effective data-informed community among institutional leaders, faculty, and staff.

As countries make continued investments in early childhood care and education (ECCE) systems, data and measurement play a critical role in outlining strengths and areas for improvement. To promote data-driven decision-making across all levels of early childhood systems, measurement must be valid, reliable, and feasible, especially when used at…

The teacher leaders who get the best results are the ones who explore the role's full potential, but it can be a challenge to get beyond a basic understanding of the responsibilities involved. The National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) wants to make it easier. "Unleashing Teacher Leadership" presents best practices and…

Non-academic factors such as school climate, grit, and growth mindset are receiving much attention in recent education policy and practice. Within this context, this study (N = 425) describes the distribution of U.S. in-service teachers' access to and use of 10 categories of non-academic data. Findings indicate that in-service teachers vary widely…

This paper examines the adoption and outcomes of shortened parts of term--referred to as SPOT--across nine diverse higher education institutions, drawing on insights from a roundtable discussion with key stakeholders involved in SPOT implementation. The white paper explores the motivations behind the adoption of SPOTs, along with the strategies…

This study assesses K-12 teachers' beliefs, contextual supports, and actual uses of student data. Results showed that teachers' beliefs, school environments, and engagement in substantive data-driven analyses are associated with their use of periodic and classroom-based data to inform their instruction and communications with instructional…

Academic outcomes and health outcomes are interconnected and reciprocal and school climate has emerged as a way to capture some of this relationship. An increasing trend in education policy is using multiple measures of school success, including school climate, such as California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). As school climate evolves as…

School climate is important for continuous improvement. California's LCFF requires districts to report on school climate and use data to inform decision making. Qualitative data, derived from an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, explored three belief constructs and sub-groups by response patterns. Education leaders have a range of…

In March 2022, RAND researchers administered the fourth and final Learn Together Surveys (LTS) via the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels. The 2022 LTS differs in two key ways from its predecessors. First, the 2022 sample includes K-12 educators whereas previous administrations of the LTS sampled only educators in schools serving grade 6…

Following a review of the literature to identify core principles of schoolwide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS), this study employed coding methods to examine teacher concerns as expressed in their responses to an open-ended probe in five middle schools. Teachers in all schools expressed concerns for their colleagues' support…

In educational contexts where many domains subject to improvement are interdependent and causal evidence is frequently lacking it is difficult, if not impossible, for policymakers and educational practitioners to decide which domain should be invested in. This paper proposes a new method that uses Conditional Mean Independent Correlations (CMIC)…

The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) has prioritized efforts to support students' social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies, such as perseverance and social awareness. To measure students' SEL competencies and the school experiences that promote SEL competencies (school climate), DCPS began administering annual surveys to…

Using data for decision-making is critical for schoolwide leadership teams and has been shown to enhance both social and academic outcomes for students (Faria et al., 2017). Using data effectively, however, requires that teams have a clear vision about the type of data, format of data presentation, and process for using data. To avoid expending…

While school officials are grappling with how to bring students safely back to classrooms during a pandemic and provide them with a quality education, educators and the public are demanding that schools find remedies for systemic educational inequities. How can education leaders keep equity at the center of their own practice and in their…

Because eligibility for Title I funding is dependent on the financial needs of schools' populations, many Title I schools face significant barriers to student achievement. Decades of research have shown that poverty has a strong negative impact on student academic performance (Herbers et al., 2012), and Title I schools frequently serve students…