ABSTRACT
Measuring student performance is not new. The availability and accessibility of performance data is. What are the implications for this shift? How do assumptions about using data in certain ways drive policies and practices? How might educators actually engage with these data? A decade ago, researchers and staff at an educational research foundation developed a research agenda to interrogate this phenomenon—to study the teachers, contexts, policies, obstacles, and the data themselves implicated in this shifting landscape. Ultimately, the initiative that emerged was guided by two large questions: how do K–8 teachers use student-performance data for instructional decisions and how do organizational and individual factors affect that use? This chapter provides the context and background for the development of a research agenda that catalyzed the projects described in subsequent chapters of this volume. The learnings—from the research projects, process of developing a new line of work, and efforts to create a professional community of researchers—are shared here. The chapter culminates in a call to build on those projects and to deepen the commitment shared by educators, policy makers, funders, and scholars to learn more about this important issue.
