4 Reasons for School Districts to Invest in Data

Public education has been undergoing an inexorable shift in its relationship to data, arguably first prompted by the publication of A Nation At Risk during the Reagan presidency in 1983. That landmark study, and others like it, painted a dim picture of the state of public education in America. The predictable result was angst, calls for change, and a gradual shift from intuitive decision making to a process that included the consideration of data to drive change.

Educators gradually accepted the value of data, though with some justified skepticism. The focus on data spawned an entire industry around the testing and punishment model for school improvement from which we are only now fitfully emerging. The same era that gave us the “War on Drugs” and accompanying incarceration rates that are now under serious and long overdue scrutiny also gave us a model for school improvement with similarly unfortunate results.

The victims of the failed testing and punishment model for school improvement have been the nation’s children, and one additional casualty has been the general willingness for educators to trust data as the foundation of school reform and improvement efforts. Most who have served in the nation’s schools during the past several decades will acknowledge that data can be a valuable tool in school improvement efforts, with the logical caveat that locally derived, reliable, and actionable data is far superior to data derived with the express purpose of shaming schools or districts into the process of school improvement.

A fresh approach to and relationship with data is now made possible by, ironically, the passage of new federal regulations known as Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor to No Child Left Behind. ESSA removes much of the regulation around which data matters most in assessing school effectiveness, replacing it with the freedom for educators to determine to a larger extent what should be measured and how the resulting data may be used to guide change and improvement efforts.

The passage of ESSA, while an important and hopeful sign of less meddlesome and counterproductive federal oversight, is only half of the issue of whether the next decade will help or hinder school improvement efforts nationwide. Only during implementation phases of the new law may details emerge that will determine ultimate success or failure of ESSA.

It is with this backdrop that this series will consider the new opportunities created by the prudent, logical, and progressive use of data to drive school improvement efforts in what looks to be the first term of either President Hillary Clinton or President Donald Trump. An examination of four central reasons to embrace data in public school districts as they simultaneously embrace change under ESSA is one way to frame the coming debate.

1. Data can motivate students and staff members to improve performance.
Few people involved in public schooling lack a competitive spirit or would deny their own instincts to improve performance over time. The same reason why we keep score in sports drives the process of change in any organization, especially if the data collected is known to be reliable and, most importantly, locally derived. Data collected for the purpose of improving future performance, without punishing those involved in producing the data, celebrates the competitive spirit that imbues most professions, public education among them. 

It is only when data is used to shame people into an effort to improve practice do we see a resistance to its value or an objection to its use. The most recent example of this process gone awry was the rollout of using student performance data to gauge teacher effectiveness, a common practice during the darkest days of NCLB implementation. The absurd notion that how children perform on one assessment can be broadly determinative as to the effectiveness of their teacher above all other factors is thankfully giving way to a more nuanced view of student assessment and its rightful place in school improvement efforts.

Districts and their leaders are beginning to understand and appreciate the value of connecting dollars spent on academic improvement to actual data derived from that process. Data-management tools in the school improvement landscape under ESSA will accelerate the cause.

The discretionary spending portion of any public district school budget is remarkably small, often less than 10% of the total budget. With personnel costs consuming roughly 75-80 % of most budgets, very little typically remains for things like innovation, personalization of learning, instructional coaching, or any other initiatives that educators often cite as crucial to the success of a district and its students.

Given the finite nature of school budgets and the fiscal parameters under which school leaders must operate each year, the decision to commit limited resources to new things and new ideas takes on added significance in any budget cycle. Convincing a board of education to consider new ways of doing things is never an easy prospect, especially absent reliable data to justify expenditures.

Investing in the ability to develop data locally that is reliable and actionable carries with it the need for resource support, and products and services are now emerging in the educational marketplace that make this important task less difficult and more cost-effective than ever before. Examining why data is a good investment is worthy of a closer look, and organizing thoughts around four specific recommendations is the purpose of this series. Data can motivate enhanced performance, one of many reasons to feature data procurement and analysis as part of any effort to increase academic achievement.

2. Data procurement and analysis is an excellent way to justify discretionary spending and guide the decision-making process.
Public education has undergone a transformation of sorts in its relationship with data. Initial skepticism and resistance to the use of data over more traditional means of assessing performance or effectiveness has been giving way as part of the landscape in public education, with mixed but promising results. The need for data that can be trusted and that should be used to guide decisions on personnel and program persists, leaving districts and their leaders to consider new ways to collect, organize, and utilize data.

The prospect of organizing school spending in a way that neatly ties together spending and student achievement is emerging as the most logical way to control costs and improve outcomes. The best answers to whether a new program or product is having its intended effect on learning and achievement are always accompanied by data to back them up, and designing a system that generates such data and packages it in usable form has been the mission of visionary providers in the educational marketplace.

The concept of relating dollars to achievement is simultaneously logical and desirable, especially in districts where innovation is the underlying reason for most discretionary spending decisions. Early adopters, whether staff members implementing new things or board members voting to support them, usually comprise about one-third of all stakeholders. The other two-thirds are often evenly divided as fence-sitters or naysayers. It is those waiting to see which way the winds of change may blow who constitute the best reason to invest in data as a means of driving productive change.

As public education becomes more comfortable with data and more resigned to its continued use in deciding what to do and what to fund, the investment in software and training that links money to academic achievement has never been more advisable or timely. A renewed commitment to research at the local level that can be accomplished in a cost-effective manner, regardless of district size or budgetary pressures.

The decision to embrace the collection and analysis of data as an agent of change in a school district carries with it the need for consistent resource and board support. If those two factors are assured, and if data gathered locally is used to guide program and personnel decisions, then the expenditure of finite district resources to make it so is wise. Using such data to link dollars spent to academic achievement gains made, long the missing link in public school districts, is the wisest way to organize efforts around the enhanced use of data. 

Another facet of data use that has presented a challenge to many public school districts is the relative dearth of reliable and actionable data of the variety not tied to state assessments and other standardized measures of student achievement. As ESSA is implemented in the coming months and years, the move away from data derived by standardized testing to more locally designed and personalized assessments will present a new but welcome challenge to school districts nationally.

The coming transition from federally mandated assessment protocols to a new kind of assessment that relies more upon local decisions should ideally be accompanied by the foresight to anticipate new ways of gathering data and the wisdom to act on them. Developing a plan that prevents a vacuum created by the lack of data from stalling progress toward local control of assessments which, if history is a guide, would likely be filled in by politicians rather than educators, is essential.

3. All districts should create and maintain a research department or function to monitor change and enhance opportunities to innovate.
Virtually every district has as part of its core mission the intention to innovate. The inclination to embrace new programs and products is or should be part of the operation in every public school district. As new approaches to instruction, scheduling, or assessment are designed and implemented, progressive districts also routinely include a way to produce, gather, and analyze data that can inform decisions and guide the process of adjusting approach.

All districts are large enough to need a research department or at least maintain a research function, but only larger districts can typically afford the staffing or even the space needed to enable it. Visionary leaders in the K-12 world of public education have recently begun to borrow ideas from post-secondary colleagues by hiring companies that can affordably provide research capabilities previously and otherwise lacking. A hypothetical illustration can neatly illustrate the value of outsourcing research.

Full day Kindergarten is something that research predominantly suggests is generally beneficial to students, and district leaders are often asked to implement such a program based on little more than intuition, presumptions, and assumptions about its likely value. Any company that performs research for the education field has at its disposal volumes of prior research and case study data to make a more compelling case for full day Kindergarten. If anyone needs convincing as to whether to roughly double the amount of time in school for five and six-year-olds, citing existing research is immeasurably more effective than vague references to its existence.

While the pricing structure and approach used by research organizations vary, most district leaders and board of education members are pleasantly surprised by how affordable this brand of outsourcing can be, especially when a learning community needs to be convinced to support a new and innovative program that, inevitably, carries a price tag. Providing real data on best practices, successes enjoyed, and challenges encountered in like-districts is an effective way to ensure eventual support.

The final item in this series will examine another aspect of data that enhances the prospects for enhancing academic achievement in an affordable and practical manner, namely the wisdom of connecting discretionary spending to student outcomes by outsourcing as much of that process as possible and practical to companies built to perform precisely that function. Like companies that specialize in research, those that have as their sole purpose the ability to organize data for school districts provide possibilities and accountability that have long been lacking in the K-12 environment.

Public school districts answer directly to the taxpayers who support them, with a business model that demands accountability and transparency to a degree generally not experienced by private companies. Most districts are led by a superintendent and other members of the administration, all of whom are hired and employed by a board of education that is charged with ensuring that the district is well run without actually running it themselves.

In this structure, justifying expenditures and using reliable data to monitor programs and adjust accordingly has taken on an unprecedented primacy in recent years. The advent of technology and the relative ease with which data can be collected and analyzed has led to an enhanced expectation that there is a data-derived reason for most decisions and recommendations that are made on products, programs, and personnel.

The decision to invest in the ability to generate, collect, and analyze data in a local context always comes with a cost, leading to the need to reassure anyone who inquires that money spent can be tied tangibly to academic improvement. The fact that data can motivate better performance, while also providing justification for discretionary spending on a variety of programs and products, has resulted in increased investment in systems of data. Providing for intra-district research capabilities is another way to enhance the collection and use of data.

The prospect of running a district is daunting enough, and the additional need to be mindful of data generation and its proper use can be overwhelming, especially since few district leaders have the time or the training to build data systems from the ground up. The final item in this series gives a glimpse into why they need not.

4. Outsourcing data production, collection, and organization to a company designed specifically for this purpose makes data more valuable as an aid to academic improvement.
District leaders are generally quite adept at analyzing data and making decisions about the future of their districts, but are often faced with too much data from standardized testing and not enough from locally derived sources and programs. This paradigm is about to become more of an issue as ESSA unfolds, given the freedom in new federal legislation for states and local districts to substitute their own assessments for aspects of a largely failed federal accountability system. As opt-out percentages on national assessments inexorably climb, the opportunity for something better simultaneously emerges, especially in districts prepared for this entirely predictable progression.

During the current presidential race and accompanying congressional campaigns, there has been a remarkable lack of attention paid to public education, which can be viewed as both a blessing and a curse. Most public educators welcome a less meddlesome federal role in education policy, and most would also acknowledge a certain unease with what may be said when candidates do finally get around to talking about public education from a policy perspective.

The only refrain heard consistently thus far has been calls from both the political right and left, in an odd and uncharacteristic show of unity, to “get rid of the Common Core,” usually meant more as an indictment of our overreaching federal government than an indication that there has been any thought given to what may replace it. Much like the bromides continuously issued by the political right about the Affordable Care Act, dismantling one thing without regard for the vacuum that would result is irresponsible.

During the time between passage of ESSA and the inauguration of our next president and seating of a new congress, the 115th in our nation’s history, school leaders would be very wise to continue investing in the ability to conduct or commission research and gather data locally for use in their local districts. The opportunity for education to chart its own path toward continuous improvement has never been more clear, as the political world seems preoccupied with its own internecine squabbling to a degree rarely before seen.

That fact makes this the best possible time and the most favorable climate imaginable for educators to prove that they are better equipped than politicians to guide the profession into a bright future, guided by the wisdom derived from data and equipped with the courage to use it. The relatively small investment in outsourcing research and data by local districts, especially in the current political climate, has never been a better bet for ensuring the successful future of public education.