A new guide from Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Pacific provides a framework, suggested activities, and activity forms to build capacity among teachers, administrators, staff, and other stakeholders for using data more comprehensively and effectively in education decision making.
The Regional Educational Laboratories partner with states and districts to build capacity. They conduct applied research and provide technical assistance in accessing, analyzing, and applying data and research. REL Pacific initially developed this guide as technical assistance to practitioners in the Pacific region.
This guide provides grade-, school-, and state-level education data teams—composed of teachers, administrators, staff, and other stakeholders—with steps, sample questions, and resources for using data more systematically and rigorously in education decision-making. Data teams can print out the templates in this guide and use them to direct their own data-informed conversations.
The guide describes five steps in data-informed conversations that lead to strategic decision-making and action:
1. Setting the stage. What question is to be addressed in this data-informed conversation? What information is needed to answer the question? Is the information available?
2. Examining the data. What patterns do the data reveal, or what “snapshot” observations can be made about the question?
3. Understanding the findings. What are the possible causes for the patterns?
4. Developing an action plan. How can a data team create an effective plan for addressing the issue?
5. Monitoring progress and measuring success. How can a data team know whether progress is being made on the issue?
Read this report at: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=360
