School Use of Data in the Face of Performance Management Sanctions: Examining the Work of School Leaders and Leadership Teams

• In Event: Data Use for School Improvement: Findings From Studies of School Leaders’ Decision Making in Accountability Contexts

Abstract

Low-performing schools are under extreme accountability/performance management (PM) pressure to dramatically improve student learning. As this pressure has mounted, the use of data has become a commonplace and oftentimes expected response for improving school performance (Little, 2012; O'Day, Bitter, & Gomez, 2011; Young & Kim, 2010). Although the number of low performing schools facing accountability sanctions is high, these settings have been largely absent in school-level data-use research. The study of data use in settings that have been sanctioned by performance management systems, and particularly those settings that have been successful in such contexts, therefore appears to be of critical importance for the advancement of data-use research, policy, and practice.
The study being reported retrospectively explored school-level data-use by school leaders in three schools that were successful at improving their school’s performance management ratings from a level 3/sanction to a level 2/off sanction rating. Two research questions were examined:
1) In what ways were school leaders involved with school-level data use?
2) In what ways did school-level data use impact the school’s trajectory of development from a level 3 to 2 performance management rating?
This study drew upon literature from three broad areas to inform its research design, data collection/instrument development, and data analysis: a) school contexts of low-performance, accountability, and PM (Colyvas, 2012; Daly, 2009; Duke, Tucker, Salmonowicz, & Levy, 2009; Finnegan & Stewart, 2009), b) school and teacher data use (Anderson, Leithwood, & Strauss, 2010; Author, 2011a, 2011b, 2012; Knapp, Copland, & Swinnerton, 2007), and c) cycles of inquiry for organizational improvement (Smylie, 2010).
Data sources include multiple interviews with principals, assistant principals, and instructional leadership team members from each school. A randomly selected group of teachers from each school was also interviewed. An assortment of school artifacts and documents were also collected/analyzed. Data analysis involved deductive and inductive coding for the generation of descriptive and analytic codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Within-case and cross-case analysis identified confirming and disconfirming evidence (Patton, 1990).
Question #1: These school leaders were highly engaged in data collection/analysis immediately upon their entry into these schools and in an ongoing manner over multiple years. They collected a broad assortment of qualitative and quantitative data--teacher and student interviews, hallway/classroom observations, and the review of teacher lesson plans, teacher team meeting agendas/minutes-- for the purpose of identifying and understanding particularly pressing problems within their organizations. Over time, principals worked to cultivate instructional leadership teams and engage teams with data to understand school-level problems and consider/plan for organizational responses. Question #2: School-level data use supported school-level problem identification and informed areas of strategic focus for the principal’s work as well as for the school more broadly.
Study findings have important implications for policymakers and practitioners who work to support schools facing accountability sanctions. Historically, conceptions of leader data use have emphasized the use of quantitative student achievement data to inform organizational decision-making. Such a conceptualization appears limiting because it does not capture the range of necessary data and the multiple purposes of data use.

Author

• Shelby A. Cosner, University of Illinois at Chicago