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…

Even before Florence Nightingale diagrammed soldiers' changing mortality rates to save lives, we have seen clever design used to convey statistics and other complex concepts. In the field of education, student data is used extensively, and those who share such data need to ensure this communication is effective. This article is based on education…

This chapter details the process the University of Michigan developed to build institutional capacity for learning analytics. A symposium series, faculty task force, fellows program, research grants, and other initiatives are discussed, with lessons learned for future efforts and how other institutions might adapt such efforts to spur cultural…

This tool and its supporting resources are intended to help education leaders understand and assess equitable access data to support a root-cause analysis and, ultimately, draft a State Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators. The activities in this tool introduce metrics, address staff capacity for analyzing equitable access data,…

This chapter is about using campus diversity data to inform student affairs work.

In this article, the author argues that student data is more than just test scores. Alex Kajitani notes that data matter because they provide crucial information to teachers that enable them to better serve their students. Teachers can use data to determine students' strengths and areas of need. The effective use of data means being able to…

Using document analysis, this paper examines the historical emergence of the quantified child, revealing how the collection and use of data has become normalized through legitimizing discourses. First, following in the traditions of Foucault's genealogy and studies examining the sociology of numbers, this paper traces the evolution of data…

All students deserve a great education, one that affords every opportunity for them to grow into knowledgeable and successful adults. To date, efforts to improve education have operated on a model of mass production, assuming--wrongly--that what works for some students must work for all. To change that model, students and their parents, teachers,…

In this article, the authors discuss the use of Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) statistics to teach the concept of price elasticity of demand in an introduction to economics course. By using real data in its computation, they argue that instructors can create a value-adding context for illustrating and applying a foundational concept in…

There is extensive research on the benefits of making data-informed decisions to improve learning, but these benefits rely on the data being effectively interpreted. Despite educators' above-average intellect and education levels, there is evidence many educators routinely misinterpret student data. Data analysis problems persist even at districts…

The main purpose of the paper is to estimate the efficiency of a big public university in Italy using individual student-level data, modeling exogenous variables in human capital formation through a heteroscedastic stochastic frontier approach. Specifically, a production function for tertiary education has been estimated with emphasis on…

There is a longstanding and pressing challenge regarding overuse of exclusionary discipline (e.g., office discipline referrals, suspensions) for students of color and students with disabilities. Moreover, many common efforts to address the problem have not been shown to enhance equity in school discipline. This article describes a promising…

This document presents an interactive visual guide that explains what data are, how they help, and what people can do with them. It also offers ways to enact statewide policies that support effective data use.

There has been a significant increase in the use of secondary data sets. Many such data sets purport to be nationally representative. Secondary data sets include research commissioned by the National Center for Education Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control, and other public entities. Research increasingly utilizes these secondary data in…

Access to geoscience data has been difficult for many educators. Understanding what educators want in terms of data has been equally difficult for scientists. From 2004 to 2009, we conducted annual workshops that brought together scientists, data providers, data analysis tool specialists, educators, and curriculum developers to better understand…