Data-Driven (In)equities: The Impact of Data Use on Students and Teachers

• In Event: 41.055 - Data-Driven Decision Making and the Classroom Context

Abstract

This paper responds to idea that “data-based decision making” is a technical-rational response to student learning that can repair educational achievement gaps between students of different subgroups. Repairing these performance disparities has been taken up as a matter of social justice. In this paper we examine whether data-based decision making reflects tenets of social justice pedagogy. We emphasize that data use is situated in a specific school context and that there exists a reciprocal, mutually constitutive relationship between contextual conditions and the use of data. Using data from a larger qualitative study of four elementary schools from a large urban school district, we demonstrate that data use exacerbates educational inequities between high and low performing schools.

Authors

• Laura Vernikoff, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Tara Schwitzman-Gerst, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Carolyn J. Riehl, Teachers College, Columbia University

• victoria parra, Teachers College, Columbia University