The Practice of Data Use: An Introduction

Abstract

Data use, or drawing on and interacting with information in the course of decision making, has emerged as a key strategy intended to foster improvement in public schools and universities alike. A range of federal and state policies promotes it, most notably No Child Left Behind (Honig and Coburn 2008) and, more recently, the America Reinvestment and Recovery Act (US Department of Education 2009) and the Statewide Longitudinal Data System Grant Program (see http://nces.ed.gov/program/slds/index.asp). There are many foundation-funded initiatives to encourage it, including the national work of the Stupski Foundation and the Gates Foundation, which recently pledged over 12 million dollars to support investment in data systems and their implementation. In higher education, data use is increasingly required as part of accreditation processes (Council for Higher Education Accreditation 2006; Ewell 2008; Western Association for Schools and Colleges 2009). School districts across the country are investing in data systems to create enhanced access to data. They are also embarking on training to encourage teachers, principals, and district leaders to integrate attention to data in their ongoing practice (Datnow et al. 2007; Kerr et al. 2006; Marsh et al. 2006). There is a great deal of optimism on the part of those who promote data use, as well as on the part of many practitioners. Yet, in spite of all of the policy and reform activity focused on data use in education, empirical research on data use continues to be weak. In particular, we still have shockingly little research on what happens when individuals interact with data in their workplace settings. In this special issue, we present a series of articles that focus on uncovering and investigating the practice of data use: what actually happens when people in schools, school districts, and higher education interact with data in the