Data Dynamics

How is your school data performing for you? Examine the ways your school can better use student achievement data, nonacademic student data, staff data, and parent/community data to identify areas for improvement. This book will help administrators and leaders with school improvement planning and implementation, and teachers will find that good data can be used to plan instruction and monitor and motivate students.

Benefits:

• Find realistic anecdotes and examples for understanding the most effective ways to use data to achieve school improvement.
• Get advice and activities on group dynamics through teaming structures.
• Gain protocols to help guide the data team's work and discussions.
• Learn ways to empower data team leaders to make sound decisions and implement change.

Contents:
Chapter 1: Shifting the Dynamics of Data Use
Chapter 2: Creating the Culture and Structures for Data Use
Chapter 3: Using Student Achievement Data
Chapter 4: Using Nonacademic Student Data
Chapter 5: Using Staff Data
Chapter 6: Using Parent/Community Data
Chapter 7: Using Data for School Improvement
Chapter 8: Using Data in Classrooms and Teacher Teams
Chapter 9: Supporting Data Use From the District Level
Chapter 10: Diagnosing Your Data Dynamics
Appendix: Reproducible IC Map of Data Use

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

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

Dr. Holcomb has provided technical assistance for implementation of school-improvement efforts throughout the United States and 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.

She 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.