ABSTRACT
This chapter describes efforts in the Teaching, Learning, and Leading With Schools and Communities program to forge effective partnerships and collaborations between diverse educational stakeholders to support teacher candidates’ knowledge of data-based decisions and data-driven instructional practices. An understanding of how teachers traditionally use and approach data must situate data use in the context of the policies that inform school contexts and that have driven school reforms which naturally influence teachers daily routines and practices. Specifically, much of education policy has framed data use as a tool for evaluating teachers, as much as a means of assessing students. Data use by school psychologists has grown to include multiple facets. While historically school psychologists were primarily tasked with conducting psychoeducational assessments for individual and classroom-level data, the implementation of new federal laws, including No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act have expanded their foci to responsive intervention processes for both general education and special education students.
