Mismeasuring Schools? Vital Signs: How to Avoid Misunderstanding, Misinterpreting, and Distorting Data

This book helps school and district leaders avoid the pitfalls that await those making sense of their school’s data. Whether you're interpreting achievement gaps, graduation rates or test results, you're at risk of reaching a mistaken judgment. By learning about common errors and how they’re made, you'll be ready to choose safer, surer paths to making better sense of the wealth of data in your school or district. The authors help educators build better evidence, see conclusions more clearly, and explain the data more persuasively.

Special features Include:

• "Questions to Spark Discussion" in each chapter encourage school site, district leaders, and board trustees to apply each chapter’s content to their own situations.
• Data visualizations, together with the authors’ interpretations, will help you learn how to do visual analysis (and reach the right conclusions).

• Practical tips provide clear guidance.
• Supplemental resources can be found at the book’s website, k12measures.com, including interactive data visualizations and analytic exercises to help you learn a concept by "doing."

Steve Rees is founder and current president of School Wise Press consultancy, and leader of its K-12 Measures team.

Jill Wynns is an urban education policy expert and a twenty-four-year veteran of the San Francisco USD Board of Education.