Using Data Strategically and Effectively to Promote Learning Opportunities: A Dialogue Designed to Explore and Expand How We Think About Data Use

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

The range of data available to administrators and educators in K-12 schools has expanded exponentially, but so far, challenges to using these data for school improvement planning and expanding learning opportunities persist. In recent years, the dominant approach to using data has been shaped by performance based accountability policies, enabled by the expanding capacity of states and districts to collect and store large quantities of data. These data allow states and districts to identify desirable and undesirable trends, set new performance goals, and monitor outcomes, but fall short when it comes to identifying and monitoring the conditions necessary to achieve better outcomes or support efforts to improve learning opportunities.

In addition, much of the data available to educators is descriptive. But descriptive data also have limitations. They capture the problem—that some schools have higher drop out rates than others or that some schools have lower levels of student performance than others—but tell us little about the sources of disparities or how to improve learning opportunities. To use data effectively for school planning and improvement, educators need more than descriptive indicators that identify problems; educators also need data that identify the conditions thought to influence important behaviors and desirable education outcomes. This type of data provides valuable information about how to reduce the drop out rate or how to improve the performance of students.

The aim of this dialogue is to foster a conversation on how to use data systems more strategically and effectively to drive school improvement and equity-related education initiatives. In this panel, we bring together researchers and policymakers with expertise on designing data systems and using data to improve learning opportunities. Their expertise cuts across schooling levels—state, district, and school levels—thus providing an integrative approach to expanding how we think about data use. This dialogue will engage panelists in discussing what we know about using data for improving learning opportunities, what the challenges and limitations are, and where we need to go to use data more strategically and effectively.

Sub Unit

• AERA Sessions

Chairs

• Robert G. Croninger, University of Maryland - College Park

• Gail Sunderman, University of Maryland - College Park

Participants

• Jaekyung Lee, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Karen H. Miles, Education Resource Strategies Inc.

• Thy Nguyen, Norfolk Public Schools

• Laura M. Stapleton, University of Maryland - College Park

Discussant

• Ruth Lopez Turley, Rice University