Data Use for Equity, Data Use for Hope: Finding Opportunity in Trying Times

• In Event: Leading Under Pressure: Scholar-Practitioner Research on Equity-Minded Data Use

Abstract

In February 2025, the United States Regional Educational Laboratories lost $350 million dollars in federal grant funding, due to data work in equity. REL Midwest and Equity Assistance Centers were particularly called out for work assisting schools in conducting “equity audits” (Quinn, 2025)—tools of data use that ask educators to use local data to pinpoint inequities in their schools and/or districts. Data use for equity has become more challenging than ever. Despite these challenges, or perhaps because of them, using data for equity ends has not lost its importance.

This presentation will explore the challenges faced by educators in their attempts to use data for equity. Data, when used critically, have the ability to make visible that which some would erase or ignore. In my work, we have relied on data to help educators make visible whose knowledge is most (and least) valued, whose power (and marginalization) is reinforced by how schools and classrooms are organized, and whose voices are included (and excluded) in decision making. We have re/conceptualized data-driven decision making as critical data driven decision making (CDDDM) (Dodman et al., 2021) and positioned the CDDDM framework as enabling educators to work at the intersection of data and equity literacies (Dodman et al., 2023). A question now is how do we still do equity data work without calling it equity data work.

The presentation will also share the opportunities of the time. Like other models of practitioner inquiry, action research, or data-driven decision-making, data use for equity (DUE) begins with observations and questions that are meaningful to an individual or group of educators. However, DUE distinguishes itself in three major ways:
1. There is a particular focus on teacher identities, student identities, and their intersection.
2. Confrontation of inequity is the driving reason for data use – it changes the questions from “what will close these gaps?” or “what will help improve this student’s data?” to “what will increase and deepen equity and learning in our school? In my classroom?”
3. DUE assumes multiple spheres of influence in data – the individual is placed at the center of the larger, interconnected system of education that includes local, regional, and national social and political influences.

This shift in attention from individual reasons for student progress to identifying systemic influences on student progress changes teachers’ data lenses. A DUE lens helps equip educators to better identify systemic inequity in their schools, use data to reflect on policies and practices, and take action against counter-productive school reforms. In a DUE framework that fosters teachers’ critical reflection, the questions being asked of data and the imagined and proposed actions change.

In addition to established challenges to engaging teachers in using data in an equity framework (e.g., conflicts with their setting’s directives; their own data skills and understandings), we now have an openly hostile environment and are losing federal data dashboards that disaggregate by equity-helpful metrics. This presentation will focus on how to capitalize on the opportunities that exist within these challenges.

Author

• Stephanie L. Dodman, George Mason University