Parental Use of Data to Make Educational Decisions

• In Event: 56.051 - Data-Driven Decision Making: Not the Usual Contexts

Abstract

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) emphasizes the importance of parental engagement. Part of that engagement is facilitating parental understanding of educational data about student and school performance. This study examined the information parents want and need to make educational decisions. The study conducted 21 focus groups with 118 parents across the state of Missouri. Parents responded to two sets of questions: about the educational information they need and design components for improving the understandability of educational data on data dashboards. The results indicated that the data parents seek are not necessarily those that can be quantified and accessed through data dashboards; they are more descriptive and qualitative. The implications for design and school and district data systems are discussed.

Authors

• Ryan Charles Miskell, WestEd

• Ellen B. Mandinach, WestEd

• Edith Gummer