Charting Success: Data Use and Student Achievement in Urban Schools. Executive Summary

In recent years, interest has spiked in data-driven decision making in education--that is, using various types of student data to inform decisions in schools and classrooms. In October 2008, the Council of the Great City Schools and American Institutes for Research (AIR) launched a project funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that focused on understanding the use of data as a lever for instructional improvement. This study focused specifically on interim (also known as benchmark) assessments that are often adopted at the district level. Interim assessments are typically characterized as falling between regular (often daily) formative assessments and annual summative assessments. The goals of this project were to (1) document and understand current interim assessment data-use practices in urban school districts and (2) to test the links between data-use practices and perceptions and student achievement. This brief is a summary of the report that focused on the second objective: examining the empirical relationships between teacher- and school-level data use and student achievement in mathematics and reading. By examining the extent to which certain data use practices are related to student achievement, the study expands on the existing body of literature on the use of interim assessments to drive instructional improvement. (Contains 1 exhibit and 3 footnotes.) [For the full report, "Charting Success: Data Use and Student Achievement in Urban Schools," see ED536748.]