Use Data Effectively to Drive Improvement

To improve student outcomes, everyone involved needs good data to guide decisions and actions. Teachers need good data to make informed choices about how they teach and what supports are priorities for their students. Students and their families must be able to track progress toward graduation and college-readiness. School and district administrators need good data to select improvement strategies and then to evaluate and refine them. And policy makers at the district, community, and state levels need good data to allocate limited resources most effectively.

Where we start

With our partner states, districts, and schools, we start by asking:

1. What, when, and how should data be provided to these partners, as well as to other stakeholders such as parents and students themselves?
2. How can access to these data translate into effective action at all levels of the system?

What we bring

IRRE brings experience and expertise to answer these questions in their local contexts. After careful study of existing data infrastructures, IRRE recommends and prioritizes the steps that will result in clear, timely, and accurate reports of student progress. Simultaneously, IRRE helps our partners develop the skills to effectively analyze, discuss, and act on the student outcome data summarized in these reports. IRRE also builds instructional leaders’ capacity to systematically collect and use data on classroom practices in tandem with outcome data. With data on classroom practice and student outcomes in hand, leaders within a system can design professional development and trainings that address specific needs.