Data-Based Decision Making

You're ready to start collecting and utilizing school data, but what data? How exactly will you find it, and how will you use it once you have it? This informative resource takes an in-depth look at best data collection practices and guides the elementary school principal on how to reach struggling learners, strengthen instruction, and achieve schoolwide improvement.

Benefits:

• Examine school issues and develop a data-based action plan.
• Self-reflect on your role as a principal at the end of every chapter.
• Consider how data can be used to reach students, teacher teams, and school leaders in order to achieve schoolwide improvement.

Contents:
Chapter 1: Data, Decisions, and the Principal in the Middle
Chapter 2: Creating the Context for Data Use
Chapter 3: Data to Guide Schoolwide Decisions
Chapter 4: Data to Support Struggling Students
Chapter 5: Data to Strengthen Classroom Instruction
Chapter 6: Data for Principal Planning and Performance

Edie L. Holcomb, PhD, has been a principal, district administrator, and university professor and is highly regarded for her ability to link research and practice on issues related to school leadership, improvement, and reform. Her classroom experience includes teaching heterogeneous classes at all grade levels, inclusion of students with multiple disabilities, and coordination of services for gifted and talented students. Her building-level administrative experience ranges from affluent suburban schools to Title I schools with racial and ethnic diversity and English learners (ELs).

At the university level, Dr. Holcomb served as associate director of the National Center for Effective Schools, developing School-Based Instructional Leadership, a training program for site-based teams. As an associate professor of educational administration at Wichita State University in Kansas, she coordinated the principalship course and internships and taught applied inquiry in the field-based doctoral program.

Dr. Holcomb understands the challenges of districts with enrollment ranging from 3,000 to 45,000, having served as director of standards and assessment and later as supervisor of twenty-one schools in the Seattle School District in Washington. She also served as executive director of curriculum and instructional services in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

She has provided technical assistance for implementation of school improvement efforts throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Guam, St. Lucia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. She helped develop Washington State s School System Improvement Resource Guide and worked with the Ohio Department of Education on its plans for technical assistance and support for districts and schools identified for improvement under No Child Left Behind. She has also worked with statewide models in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Dr. Holcomb holds a BS in elementary education, an MS in gifted education, and an EdS in educational administration. She received a PhD in educational administration from the University of Minnesota.