A growing number of school districts are engaging in systems-level, equity-based reform to redress persistent disparities, and many are hiring Equity Directors to lead the way. This qualitative study explores the role of Equity Directors, asking, "What are the leadership practices of Equity Directors?" and "What are the purposes…

Despite a growing focus on access to and use of emergent literacy assessment in early childhood, little is known about early childhood teachers' data practices and their associations with children's emergent literacy skills. A questionnaire was used to confirm and elaborate findings from prior qualitative work (Schachter & Piasta, 2022)…

The U.S. Department of Education has required educational collection and reporting. For postsecondary institutions, this requirement has evolved from the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS), which was used from the 1960s to the 1980s, to the Integrated postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) (Aliyeva, Cody, & Low, 2018).…

For decades, states have been investing in statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDSs) that connect individual-level data over time from early childhood, K-12, postsecondary, and workforce. Because of these investments, most states have a powerful tool that could provide people with the information they need to make decisions at key transition…

In today's data-sharing paradigm, personal data has become a valuable resource that intensifies the risk of unauthorized access and data breach. Increased data mining techniques used to analyze big data have posed significant risks to data security and privacy. Consequently, data breaches are a significant threat to individual privacy. Privacy is…

Despite long-standing efforts to address and eliminate disproportionality in special education, inequities remain and continue to negatively impact Black, Indigenous, and other students of color with Individualized Education Programs. This brief from the Western Educational Equity Assistance Center (WEEAC) supports state education agencies, local…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents a three part series on fixing assessments. In Part 1: "Assessment Standards are Broken," David Eubanks highlights the challenges with the assessment standards articulated by institutional accreditors. In this article, Part 2: Megan R. Good, discusses the opportunity costs faced and…

The use of data to inform instruction has been linked to improved student outcomes, early identification of intervention needs, and teacher decision-making and efficacy. Additionally, data are used as a means of accountability within educational settings. However, little is known about data use practices among early grades teachers. The purpose of…

One of the most exciting products generated and refined through the Early Learning Network studies is a web-based classroom assessment tool known as OLOS -- the Optimizing Learning Opportunities for Students Observation System. The OLOS tool focuses on improving student outcomes by providing teachers with real-time data to support individualized…

Collective efficacy has become a prominent feature in educational policy and practice with growing evidence that a strong sense of collective efficacy amongst educators leads to better outcomes for students. With growing interest in the importance of collective efficacy and how to cultivate it, the Collective Efficacy Tracking Tool was created to…

Monitoring and guiding multiple groups of students in face-to-face collaborative work is a demanding task which could possibly be alleviated with the use of a technological assistant in the form of learning analytics. However, it is still unclear whether teachers would indeed trust, understand, and use such analytics in their classroom practice…

Teacher data-driven decision making (DDDM) is a professional practice of great prominence in the current K-12 education system. Moreover, teacher self-efficacy and anxiety around DDDM represent important measurement targets in both research and practice. This study consequently examined the validity, reliability, and invariance of data collected…

The emerging field of data science has brought attention to how we teach statistics and data science (Bargagliotti et al., 2020; Franklin et al., 2007) and prepare the next generation of statistics and data science teachers (Franklin et al., 2013). To realize the full potential of statistics and data science, researchers have also called for using…

This literature review aims to examine the approach given to open science policy in the different studies. The main findings are that the approach given to open science has different aspects: policy framing and its geopolitical aspects are described as an asymmetries replication and epistemic governance tool. The main geopolitical aspects of open…

One way to provide intensive intervention for students with severe and persistent reading difficulties is to use a systematic data-based decision-making process called data-based individualisation (DBI). DBI is a process for identifying needs and aligning them with specialist support. Meta-analyses of DBI studies by university-based researchers…