Leadership skills for supporting learning: school leaders need to understand the skills it takes to use school data as the centerpiece for decision making around student achievement.

If you are a principal assigned to a school that is not meeting achievement standards, you have lots of company. As a result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the parallel state-adopted accountability models, many schools throughout the country are now designated as underperforming schools. These are schools, perhaps like yours, that have not been able to demonstrate acceptable levels of achievement for all groups of students as measured by accountability standards.

If the principal's job were not already tough enough in those schools, it is now made even more daunting by the task of figuring out how to develop a strategy for school improvement.

Sadly, many principals are simply ill-prepared to create and manage a building infrastructure that supports effective instruction and has as its constant focus the technical core of teaching and learning. The question, of course, is how does one create such an infrastructure?

While there are many leadership skills needed by the principal to support instructional improvement and student learning, for the purpose of this article we would suggest two specific skills that are absolutely essential. The first is the ability to collect and manage information about your students, staff, building and community. The second skill is the ability to analyze and use this data to effectively assess areas where students are not achieving to expected levels of proficiency.

Careful analysis of school data should be used to inform actual decisions by the principal and school staff--decisions that lead to the development of clear objectives and strategies to improve teaching and learning.

Creating a school-wide database

So where do you begin? To make data collection and analysis less mysterious, it might be helpful to use as a metaphor the instrument panel of your car. Each time you take your vehicle out for a drive, you are actually managing and analyzing data. The primary source of data is the speedometer, which tells you the speed that you are traveling in miles per hour. That data is only meaningful, however, after you mentally process that information in the context of your knowledge, experience and objectives. For example, upon analysis you may realize that you are traveling too fast for the road conditions, which require you to decrease your speed to a safe level. Or you may realize that you are driving too far beneath the speed limit and backing up traffic on a busy freeway.

Similar analyses are done using other gauges on the instrument panel and a host of computerized warning lights that alert you to potential problems that will require your attention in order to return to optimal performance. Whether we realize it or not, every day we collect, process and analyze information as we go about our lives, and so should it be for schools.

The first question for the principal to consider is what kind of data will be needed to accurately describe the students, staff and community that, upon analysis, will assist in discovering specific areas needing improvement. A review of recent literature on the use of data for decision making in schools suggests the importance of perception data, process data, demographic data, attendance and behavior data and results data.

Perception data

Perception data describes the various stakeholders' perceptions of the school as a learning community and measures the school's self-perception against the community's image of the school. Perception data is usually collected from various stakeholders in the school community through the use of carefully constructed surveys and questionnaires. If you are not adept at developing such questionnaires or surveys, help is readily available.

Such data generally reveals values and beliefs that constituents hold about how business is conducted in the school and the importance given to academics, school environment, leadership and communication, as well as the degree of parent satisfaction with the school and staff.

A fundamental question here is whether the school's self-perception as measured by staff matches the perceptions of others outside the school. For example, survey results from teachers may lament the lack of parental involvement in the school, a critical factor in successful schools. Survey results from parents may, on the other hand, indicate that parents feel unwelcome in the school and are reluctant to participate.

The task of the principal and school staff is to analyze the data for points of variance and to seek solutions for closing the gap between self-perception and community image. Perception data provides important information on what matters, and is a point to begin the conversation for change.

Process data

Essentially, process data is what teachers do to produce achievement for their students. It is an assessment of the various educational practices and events occurring around teaching and learning. This information tells us about such things as instructional strategies, time on task, homework assigned, parent contacts, books read, classroom management, use of authentic assessments and the degree to which teachers engage in collaboration.

Process data should also provide a fairly accurate picture of the school culture for learning. Are there structures or practices in place that ensure that students who need extra help receive it? Are teachers accessible before and after school? Are students who are having the greatest difficulty placed in small classes with the strongest teachers? Does your building celebrate and recognize student achievement in ways that help motivate students to succeed academically?

Such process data can be gathered through the use of staff self-reporting inventories, curriculum audits, and through direct observation of classroom planning and teaching as well as open discussions with staff and parents.

Demographic data

Data on gender, race, age, grade, disability, limited English proficient students and time in the building allows for comparisons to be made between subgroups to determine if all elements of the school's population are achieving at satisfactory levels.

Analysis may show, for example, that there are gender discrepancies in achievement in the core content areas. Boys may be disproportionately represented among students with low reading scores or girls disproportionately represented among the students with low math scores. Data might also show that limited English proficient students are not doing well in either math or reading. Further analysis may show that specific subgroups in that population of students have also attended the school for the least amount of time.

These two different pieces of data about the same subgroup may help the school staff identify the correct problem. Careful analysis of such subgroup achievement gaps can provide reference points to target intervention strategies as part of a comprehensive school improvement plan.

Attendance and behavior data

Attendance and behavior data will also provide an important snapshot of the student population, as well as potential problem areas with teachers. Clearly, poor student attendance will adversely affect student achievement levels. Therefore, strategies for improving student attendance may become a focal point for a school improvement plan.

For example, close analysis may reveal that the most serious attendance problems are with students moving from one school level to another, ie., elementary school to middle school and middle school to high school. A transition plan for students entering a new school can provide interventions to encourage good attendance in this critical school year for students.

Strategies for improving school-wide student behavior can also be an important element in improving the underperforming school. For example, a student behavior analysis may reveal that standard discipline practices routinely used by teachers exclude students from the classroom and exacerbate the amount of class time missed, therefore adversely affecting learning. A different school-wide discipline model can reduce important class time missed and make discipline everyone's responsibility.

Results data

Finally, the data that is most common and is at the center of the accountability movement is results data, or student learning data. This data provides information of what students and subgroups of students have actually learned in various school subjects. The data from the various subsets of the state assessment tests, as well as any individual school district assessment instruments, provide valuable information to be used in developing a learning profile for your school district.

For example, when the school receives test data from state assessment it is important that the results are reviewed with a critical eye. Is there curriculum alignment to the assessment? Is what is tested covered in content area of the school curriculum? Is the content delivered at the right grade level, or perhaps presented at the correct grade level but taught after the testing window? Using this data may prompt changes and modifications in the school curriculum to address the low scores as well as the achievement gap.

Using data for decision making

Now that we have identified the various types of data that should be collected, how does this translate into school improvement? Creating a school-wide database by collecting this type of information provides a current baseline against which to measure the effects of school improvement strategies that you and your faculty decide to initiate.

Data collection is a continual process that should provide school-wide information that is periodically updated, is accessible electronically, easily retrievable, well organized and available to all in your school and community who are part of the school improvement planning process.

Systematic and careful analysis of your school-wide database will provide important clues for developing a multifaceted approach to school improvement that sets measurable targets of achievement through a disciplined approach that uses data to drive decision-making and for alignment of scarce resources.

As principal, you will need to create a building culture that encourages professional scrutiny and where there is open and honest critique of the work of teaching and learning. You will also need to lead regular data-focused meetings during which results data is disaggregated and analyzed by staff to assess where gaps are occurring in achievement.

Similarly, school process data analysis can provide a picture of such things as what instructional strategies are being used, how much instructional time is devoted to critical content areas such as reading and math, what creative approaches by individual teachers seem to be most successful for students having difficulty learning, how much time is spent on behavior and classroom management, and the degree to which collaboration is occurring within the building.

Everything Is data

To end teacher isolation within the school learning environment, the principal must establish a school climate and culture that supports, values and rewards collaborative professional behavior. Building a community of learners is tacit recognition that teacher and student isolation creates a greater chance for student failure in your school. The school staff and community need to develop an awareness that everything is data and that everything done as a result of reviewing that data is an intervention.

In summary, when you, your staff and school community decide to use school data as the centerpiece for decision making around student achievement, you are well on your way toward moving an underperforming school to a high-performing school where students demonstrate improved achievement.

William J. Price is a professor of Educational Leadership at Eastern Michigan University, where Ella M. Burton is an assistant professor of Educational Leadership.