Leveraging Data for Student Success: Improving Education Through Data-Driven Decisions

People providing services to schools, teachers, and students want to know whether these services are effective. With that knowledge, a project director can expand services that work well and adjust implementation of activities that are not working as expected. When finding that an innovative strategy benefits students, a project director might want to share that information with other service providers who could build upon that strategy. Some organizations that fund programs for students will want a report demonstrating the program’s success.

Determining whether a program is effective requires expertise in data collection, study design, and analysis. Not all project directors have this expertise—they tend to be primarily focused on working with schools, teachers, and students to undertake program activities. Collecting and obtaining student-level data may not be a routine part of the program. This book provides an overview of the process for evaluating a program. It is not a detailed methodological text but focuses on awareness of the process. What do program directors need to know about data and data analysis to plan an evaluation or to communicate with an evaluator? Examples focus on supporting college and career readiness programs. Readers can apply these processes to other studies that include a data collection component.

Laura G. Knapp, MA, is a program director in the Education and Workforce Development division at RTI International whose work focuses on improving student success in preparing for college and career. She has more than 25 years of experience in educational research, including program evaluation, policy analysis, research design, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and preparation of policy-relevant reports for nontechnical audiences. She also assists various organizations in building data systems and using data to improve processes and document results. Before joining RTI, she consulted on issues surrounding data use and education policy for a variety of clients including the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, University of North Carolina General Administration, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Elizabeth Glennie, PhD, is a senior research analyst in the Education and Workforce Development division at RTI International. She leads projects that involve acquiring and using data to conduct innovative problem-focused research on challenges facing students, teachers, and schools. In addition to conducting research, she has provided practitioners with research-based technical support on using various forms of data. Before coming to RTI, Dr. Glennie was the first Director of the North Carolina Education Research Data Center at Duke University, where she created procedures for transforming student data routinely collected by the State of North Carolina into a longitudinal data system that permitted addressing various questions about the school system.

Karen J. Charles, PhD, is an analyst in RTI’s Education and Workforce Development division. She is a former classroom teacher and professional developer with expertise in mathematics and science education. Her practitioner experience has supported projects focused on student outcomes and technical assistance designed to improve student outcomes. Before joining RTI, she led the technical assistance academy for over 150 regional math and science staff developers at the southeast regional education laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s SERVE Center. Her work focused on developing standards-based curriculum and performance assessment tasks to engage students in higher-level classroom experiences.