Overview: Standards for Data Use

Just as the education system is now driven by student standards -- what students should know and be able to do – there are also important education leadership standards -- what principals should know and be able to do to lead a successful school building. Leadership standard have come in several forms over the past few years, including, but not limited to, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) leadership standards, and the Education Leaders Constituents Council (ELCC) standards for advanced programs in educational leadership. These standards are a documented set of skills that the field has deemed necessary to be a high quality education leader. With respect to data-informed decision-making, there are specific standards that relate to the skills and behaviors needed by leaders to effectively use data in their school.

High standards for school data use revolve around the process of educators-- principals, teachers and instructional leaders—working together to analyze data to diagnose student achievement and improve instruction. Schools are primary users of student assessment results provided through the state assessment and district assessments to make these diagnoses. Overall, school leaders (led by principals but assisted by teacher leaders, instructional coaches and department chairs) set the standards for data use in the school by creating a culture of inquiry and data use. To meet high standards, time is devoted to data analysis. Patterns of low performance are addressed through teachers’ professional development or curriculum improvements.  Individual learning problems are diagnosed and remediated quickly. Students have extended learning time (before or after school, during the summer) or be placed in flexible groups until they catch up. School improvement plans are data driven and teachers gauge their own progress and professional development based on the academic growth of their students.

1. Essential Elements

The current set of accepted leadership standards suggest that the ability to collect, understand, analyze and use data to inform all decisions is a very important leadership skill needed to increase student achievement. Standards on data use fit into a larger set of leadership standards.

For example, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) includes these standards related to data use:

• Understand information sources, data collection and data-analysis strategies

• Understand curriculum design, implementation, evaluation and refinement

• Understand measurement, evaluation and assessment strategies

• Understand the change process for systems, organization and individuals

• Understand current technologies that support management functions. 

Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), in its report Balanced Leadership, has found that the following data use skills have a statistically significant effect on school improvement:

• Leaders are directly involved in the design and implementation of curriculum, instruction and assessment practices
• Leaders establish clear goals and keeps those goals in the forefront of the school's attention
• Leaders monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of school practices and their impact on student learning
• Leaders are change agents who are willing to and actively challenge the status quo
• Leaders provide contingent rewards that recognize and reward individual accomplishments.

2. Promising Practices

In Georgia, many schools are using a Balanced Scorecard approach to organize and create standards and a framework for data use in their schools. This approach values multiple types of data and multiple measures of success—something that schools can tailor to their own needs. The Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement provides professional development for school leadership teams that target eight specific standards for school leaders, including the standards within “data analysis leader.” The modules specific to the data analysis leader teach leaders to guide their team in administering benchmark assessments and then properly analyzing the results as well as teaching school leaders to identify root causes of problems to find the right solutions without jumping to conclusions. 

Boston Public Schools uses the “Fast Track” system along with the My BPS Web portal to provide a framework and support the schools ongoing use of data. These web-based data bases and instructional tools help to develop a school culture defined by easy to access data in forms that are easy to manipulate and understand. The tools add to the chances that school leaders and teachers will meet the high expectations and standards for data use to improve instruction.

In addition to these specific examples, the most detailed effective practices for data use come from the redesigned ISLLC Standards and eight dimensions on effective leadership. Best practices of school leaders are described below:

• Ensure that a variety of sources of data that illuminate student learning are used in the forging of vision and goals. Data sources include assessment data related to student learning, demographic data pertaining to students and the community, and information on patterns of opportunity to learn.
• Carefully monitor an examination of assumptions, beliefs and values, the implementation of goals and the evaluation of the impact of school objectives on organizational performance and student learning.
• Be diligent about providing feedback on performance to colleagues on a consistent basis and in a timely manner. This can include using personal knowledge developed through numerous classroom observations, both informal and formal, and employing a variety of supervisory and evaluation strategies.
• Personally promote a serious attitude about data-based decision-making among colleagues.
• Ensure that assessment systems are comprehensive. Assessments address both classroom and school-based activity and a wide variety of monitoring and data collection strategies should be used.
  
• Ensure that student learning is measured using an assortment of techniques. For example, comprehensive designs often include teacher record keeping systems, end-of-level or end-of-unit reports, student work products, criterion-referenced tests, and standardized measures of student performance.
• Highlight information gleaned from direct observations in classrooms.
• Disaggregate information on the important conditions and outcomes of schooling (e.g., program placement of students, test results) by relevant bio-social characteristics of students (e.g., gender, race, class).
• Highlight tight alignment between classroom-based and school-based methods of assessing student learning.
  
• Act as master craftspersons in the communication and use of the data as the lifeblood of the assessment system.
• Ensure that assessment data is at the heart of (a) mission development, (b) instructional planning, (c) the evaluation of the curricular program, (d) the identification of and the design of services for special needs students, (e) monitoring progress on school goals and improvement efforts, and (f) the evaluation of school staff.
• Provide teachers and parents with assessment results on a regular basis.
• Ensure that professional development opportunities and experiences flow from data on student achievement, link carefully with district and school goals, are integrated into the culture of the school, and focus on student learning.