From a new institutional theoretical perspective, this article explores school actors' sense-making linked to data-based decision making (DBDM) policy in general and processes of data analysis in particular. The study revealed how actors' interpretation of and response to DBDM pointed to strong and weak couplings between and within the local…

While there are many different types of education data, policymakers and education leaders often place heavy emphasis on data from large-scale quantitative measures, such as annual state assessments. But data from these sources alone do not provide a complete picture of learning and are often not well suited to informing improvements at the local…

Speculative reform jumps the gun on notions of data-driven reform, requiring administrators to anticipate and act to ensure problems (and the data that would show them) do not materialize. Speculative reforms are incapable of delivering the outcomes they promise, as they are fueled by a fear of the future that their reforms do not extinguish. In…

Everyone who uses student information has a responsibility to maintain students' privacy and the security of their data. Ensuring student data privacy is about so much more than complying with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). While privacy must be top of mind when thinking about collecting and using personally identifiable…

Despite increasing calls to build equitable data infrastructures, the education field has yet to have a shared guideline around equitable education data management and stewardship. To address this gap, we propose one framework from the data governance literature: the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data management principles…

Data infrastructures exist in a variety of formats. This article draws on the insights of senior personnel involved in developing a new data dashboard in one state jurisdiction in Australia. While literature on dashboards often focuses on the teachers and learners influenced by them, there is less attention to those involved in their development…

For any government, difficult choices must be made about how and where to prioritize any school construction. In the absence of data-driven decision-making, these choices typically will be made based on opinions; when that is the case, the most powerful people's opinions tend to dominate. On the other hand, data help us ensure all the children's…

Determining whether a state's young people are on track for a life of opportunity is a difficult task for governors and state leaders. States can be both awash in data and unable to easily access and use that data to inform policy. State longitudinal data systems that meaningfully connect workforce, higher education, K-12, and early childhood…

This guide is designed for use by school, district, and state education agency staff to improve the effectiveness of efforts to collect and use discipline data, including reporting accurate and timely data to the federal government. It explains the importance of collecting discipline data, identifies key considerations for agencies implementing…

While the use of numbers in governance has a long history, the kinds of numbers we now produce enable a range of new possibilities for monitoring, regulation and policy decision-making. Global policy actors are now calling for a steep increase in investment in education data. The growing trust in numbers has been critiqued by education policy…

Complete College America (CCA) is partnered with the National Student Clearinghouse in promoting the latter's Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP), a data and reporting tool for tracking student success metrics. The PDP is offered at nominal cost, built for democratized data access, and encompasses transfer data native to Clearinghouse products,…

Data use has gained policy traction at the federal, state, and local levels in the United States and internationally, and is now embedded in teacher, principal, and district leader standards in the U.S. However, many decisions implemented in policy and practice are being made on insufficient evidence and assume a relatively straightforward,…

This knowledge brief is part of a continuing series designed to inform California education leaders about new research findings on key state policy topics. It summarizes recent findings on improving the access to, and the use of, teacher workforce data in California, and focuses on the importance of instituting a statewide teacher data system that…

We present a historical case study of "data-driven" general education policy reform at the City University of New York, where within-system transfer issues prompted the need for curricular reform that was debated and eventually implemented from 2011 to 2017. Through an empirical examination of artifacts such as meeting minutes, internal…

States' commitments to tackling long standing inequities have been stifled by missing data, long delays, insufficient data-analysis tools, and the excessive reporting burden placed on states and institutions. If states hope to achieve their completion and equity goals, they need access to data that does not leave them guessing--so they can…