ABSTRACT

In national studies of districts known for strong data use, teachers showed difficulty with question posing, data comprehension, and data interpretation, answering only 48 percent of questions correctly when drawing inferences from given data. Most literature and dialogue in education communities mistakenly treats data misunderstandings as if they are educators' fault. If educators really were to blame, it would be within educators' power to entirely remedy data problems. However, even when educators implement recommended interventions with fidelity, this is not possible. For example, professional development (PD) and staffing-based supports such as strong leadership, data coaches, professional learning communities (PLCs), and collaboration hold great potential to improve educators' data use, and most districts already utilize them on some level. Educators use data to 'treat' students, given proven benefits of data. Most of them acquire this data from reports, typically generated within data system or created by colleague using exported data Fifty-nine percent of teachers even use data while on their own.