Data access is critical when educators need to make informed decisions about curriculum, assessments, academic and social-emotional interventions, and more. So how are superintendents using data–and can they access it quickly and effectively in order to use it?
A national poll from the Data Quality Campaign and AASA, The School Superintendents Association surveyed district superintendents to find out they use data to support their students and schools.
Data is an important part of superintendents’ decision-making and it provides insights about student and school performance. Data gives school and district leaders confidence that students are on track for success.
Still, despite their current data-informed insights, superintendents say they want access to more data.
Here are some top lessons from that poll:
1. Ninety-eight percent of superintendents say they would be more confident in their abilities to make decisions for their district if they had better access to information.
2. Ninety-nine percent of superintendents feel that state data could be more useful. This type of state data could be made more useful with tools to help superintendents
act on the information and more training and ongoing support for analyzing, reporting, and communicating the data.
3. Ninety-three percent of superintendents say they have started collecting new data during the pandemic, and nearly all (94 percent) who have initiated new data collection agree: the new data is giving them useful information and insights.
4. Ninety-two percent of superintendents agree that data about students’ learning and academic progress is an important part of getting kids back on track after the pandemic.
5. Eighty-seven percent say they can find all of the data that they need to understand whether or not their school is effectively preparing students for next steps. Twelve percent have only an anecdotal understanding of what happened to some students after they left.
6. Superintendents are using data to make changes and share information with communities. Nearly all report using disaggregated data in some way–95 percent use disaggregated data at least once during the year, and 25 percent use disaggregated data once a week or more.
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