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Solution Tree
Cameron L. Rains, CEO
Edmund M. Ackerman, President
Solution Tree Press
Publisher: Kendra Slayton
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For Dad. Even though you aren’t able to read this book, you certainly helped write it.
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book started at a writer’s workshop I was invited to attend where, at the end of the weekend, I was encouraged to give a book pitch to an editor. I planned to simply attend the workshop to learn about the process of writing a book and then leave without pitching a book, since I did not have an idea for one. Thank you to Jeanne Spiller for challenging me not to miss out on maximizing the workshop experience and for jump-starting my brain toward the idea that eventually became this book. Thank you to the “goat rodeo”—Jordan Ashley, Eric Atauhene, Taylor Barton, and Jason Hillman—for helping me refine my ideas during that workshop. I’m sure glad we were all seated together.
Thank you to Hilary Goff for listening to the first iteration of this book’s contents and helping me recognize its potential. Thank you to Sarah Foster for her impressive editing talents that helped transform my drafts into polished products. Thank you to the many other members of the Solution Tree Press team who have had a hand in editing, proofreading, designing, and otherwise producing this book.
I want to thank my wife, Carlyn, and daughter, Quinn, whose patience and support never waned during the writing process. The time you allowed me to think, process, write, rewrite, and rewrite some more was a cherished gift. Thank you for letting me take on this challenge. I love you both so much!
Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:
Zachary Ashauer
Social Sciences Teacher
Hortonville Area School District
Hortonville, Wisconsin
John D. Ewald
Associate
Solution Tree Frederick, Maryland
Doug Gee
Superintendent
Clear Lake Community School District
Clear Lake, Iowa
Scott Hagerman
Superintendent
Tanque Verde Unified School District
Tucson, Arizona
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Stephenie
Eaton High School
Regional Principal
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
qathet School District No. 47
Louis Lim
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Associate Principal
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Spring Independent School District
Principal
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Luke Spielman
Principal
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Steven Weber
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Assistant Principal
Assistant Principal
Legacy Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Madison, Alabama
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Fort Worth, Texas
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Becoming a Targeted Te am
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
qathet School District No. 47
Eaton, Ohio
Powell River, British
Ian Landy
Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Powell River, British
Columbia, Canada
Bur Oak Secondary School
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Luke Spielman
Principal
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass, Texas
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
qathet School District No. 47
Eaton, Ohio
Chapter 7
Powell River, British
Ian Landy
Taking Action
Regional Principal
Columbia, Canada
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Powell River, British
Bur Oak Secondary School
Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Associate Principal
Spring Independent School District
Principal
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent
School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Luke Spielman
Principal
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
About the Author
Jason Williams, EdD, is a consultant who works with schools and districts on improving their collaborative practices to increase student growth and achievement using the Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) at Work® process and their inclusive practices that result in general education and special education teachers’ collaboration.
Jason began his career in education as a singleton middle school science teacher in Poplar Grove, Illinois. Then, he learned about PLC at Work at Kildeer Countryside Community Consolidated School District 96 in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. He assumed the roles of instructional coach, assistant principal, and district administrator during his years at District 96, where he supported teachers and staff in their collaborative pursuit and implementation of best practices as a nationally recognized Model PLC school and district.
Jason completed his doctorate in educational leadership at Concordia University Chicago, where he researched multiple teaching factors that impact technology integration practices. He also holds three master’s degrees: one in curriculum design and education reform from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; one in literacy education, with an emphasis in English as a second language and bilingual education, from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois; and one in educational leadership from the American College of Education in Indianapolis, Indiana.
To book Jason Williams for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.
Foreword
by Jeanne Spiller
In education, we’ve never had more access to data. Numbers are everywhere— flooding our inboxes, flashing across dashboards, and filling up meetings in the form of charts, spreadsheets, and color-coded graphs. We track it all: test scores, behavior incidents, reading levels, and attendance trends.
But here’s the real question: Are we using that data in ways that truly serve students? Too often, the answer is no. That’s what makes Shared Data, Shared Decisions: A Student-Centered Framework for a Healthy Data Culture so important.
This book doesn’t just talk about using data—it challenges us to use it with purpose. It’s a shift from being data driven, which too often feels compliance based and cold, to being truly student centered, where data supports learning, not just monitors it.
This book highlights the disconnect that many of us feel; we’re constantly gathering information, but the impact on instruction—or, more importantly, on students— isn’t always clear. Jason Williams doesn’t just name the problem. He offers a thoughtful and actionable framework for moving forward—one that prioritizes people over processes and learning over labels.
I’ve known Jason for years. We worked together in Kildeer Countryside School District 96, a K–8 district in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. At the time, we made a deep investment in helping teams use data to inform their decisions. We had systems, meetings, and protocols in place. But if I’m honest, we didn’t always keep the focus where it should’ve been. We discussed the data process extensively, but not enough about the students behind the data. This book reflects the kind of work we were striving for—and takes it even further.
The idea for this book came up over dinner. Jason was discussing the frustrations he was observing. He saw all the effort schools were investing in data collection, yet the conversations often felt shallow or disconnected from instruction. I encouraged
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Hazel Green Elementary School
him to bring his idea to the writing workshop that Solution Tree was hosting for associates. He wasn’t sure it was worth pursuing at first. But the questions he was asking were the same ones many educators have been asking for years. What he’s created since that conversation is something that’s both timely and timeless.
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
qathet School District No. 47
Louis Lim
Principal
Assistant Principal
Luke Spielman
At the heart of this book is Jason’s 5T framework, five key qualities of a healthy, student-centered data culture: (1) targeted, (2) timely, (3) trustful, (4) transparent, and (5) tenacious. Each quality helps educators and teams rethink how they use data, not just what they’re collecting but why and how they’re using it to move learning forward.
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
Jason doesn’t overwhelm readers with theory. He offers tools, protocols, reflection questions, and real-world examples that help teams transition from data-driven conversations to actionable instruction. Whether you’re a teacher seeking clarity, a principal aiming for alignment, or a district leader seeking coherence, the framework provides a way to focus your work and discuss it effectively. And most importantly, it keeps students at the center of every decision.
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Spring Independent School District
Principal
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
What this book does so well is restore humanity to our data practices. It reminds us that every data point represents a learner—a real student with strengths, needs, and a story. When we use data well, it creates curiosity, not fear. It helps teams ask better questions. It pushes educators to respond more effectively together.
Steven Weber
Rogers, Arkansas
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Jason also pushes back on the idea that more data is always better. The truth is, we don’t need more data; we need more meaningful data. And we need to use it collaboratively, not in isolation. The 5Ts help build a culture where data is used to connect, not to control. Therefore, this book is for you if you’ve ever:
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
• Sat in a meeting where students were reduced to color-coded dots
Assistant Principal
• Felt like your school was going through the motions when it came to data
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
• Wished your team could go deeper, move faster, or collaborate better
Luke Spielman
Principal
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Shared Data, Shared Decisions is the book I wish I had as a school leader. It’s grounded, practical, and written with deep respect for the complexity of our work. Jason has held roles as a classroom teacher, coach, administrator, and consultant. He knows firsthand what it looks like when data conversations go off the rails— and what it takes to get them back on track. His voice in this book is supportive and steady. He doesn’t scold. He coaches.
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Read this book with your team. Highlight it. Discuss it. Try the tools. Come back to it when the work gets hard because cultural work always gets hard. This
Fort Worth, Texas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
book does not offer quick fixes or flashy solutions. It’s about building something sustainable that supports learning.
Jason also reminds us that this isn’t just about improving our systems. It’s about enhancing our impact. The best data systems in the world are of little value if they don’t lead to improved outcomes for students.
And outcomes don’t improve by chance. They improve when adults work together with focus, trust, and a sense of urgency. That’s precisely what this book helps teams do.
To Jason—thank you for writing the book so many of us needed. Thank you for capturing what so many felt but didn’t know how to say. And thank you for providing us with the tools to take action.
To the reader, whether you’re brand new to this work or years into it, you’ll find clarity, encouragement, and momentum in these pages. This book won’t just guide your data practices—it will strengthen your culture. Ultimately, it’s not about the numbers. It’s about the names behind them. Let’s get to work.
Jeanne Spiller is an author, education expert, and Solution Tree associate supporting schools and districts through workshops, coaching, and collaborative initiatives to enhance instruction, foster innovation, and promote equity.
Introduction
Science was always my favorite subject in school, but I devoted the majority of my time to learning about and performing in the fine arts. During high school, I loaded my schedule with advanced science courses and band and choir classes. Then, after school, I participated in jazz choir, jazz band, play or musical rehearsals, and dance classes. These interests in different worlds created some difficult decision points because I didn’t have time to do everything. For example, my high school theater director didn’t understand why I wanted to take an independent study in organic chemistry as a senior instead of an acting, directing, or stagecraft study with her.
In college, I began to realize that I didn’t need to switch between my fine-arts brain and my science brain; in fact, there was a lot of benefit to tapping into both at once. For example, I once explained the molecular structures of hydrocarbons to my lab partner—who happened to be a dance minor—using ballet terminology. I was able to use my fine-arts skills to help explain and present scientific information in ways that were understandable to a wider audience. I was also able to better understand the technical aspects of fine arts by tapping into my scientific knowledge.
As I began my career as an educator, I continued to find myself crossing boundaries between both worlds. This science-and-art dichotomy continued when I taught seventh-grade science and directed the school’s drama club. Throughout my career as a technology coach, school administrator, district administrator, and consultant, it seems I always have found the in-between spots within tasks and responsibilities. By living and working in these in-between spots, I’ve come to find that the space in between seemingly contradicting areas of knowledge can actually allow deeper understanding in a way that focusing on one or the other does not provide.
Like my lifelong interest in art and science, this book exists between two categories of ideas—data and culture—that, at times, can seem oppositional. But just
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Eaton High School
Regional Principal
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
qathet School District No. 47
Louis Lim
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Associate Principal
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
like art and science, I promise you that it’s not contradiction you will find if you are willing to hang out at the intersection of these very different topics. It’s connection. High-functioning collaborative teams, schools, and districts are aware of the relationship between their data practices and their cultures and recognize that improving one likely requires improving the other. They are that connected. A system that lacks understanding of the connection between data and culture might create goals that are highly likely to be met without any concerted effort. Goals in this system don’t carry much weight other than there being a requirement to have them. Conversely, a system where there is a clear understanding of the connection between data and culture views goals as a mechanism to collectively and intentionally work toward improvement. Goals are written as ambitious outcomes so that when they are met, they are celebrated and energize the teams, teachers, and students who worked toward them. Writing better goals and working together to meet them can better the culture. Better culture gives the organization courage to write ambitious goals. This is but one example of the many connections between data practices and culture.
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Why Data Practices Matter
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Luke Spielman
Principal
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
When you read the word data, what pops into your mind? Is it numbers, scores, results or percentages, points, and perspectives? Maybe it’s technology or research? It might even be accountability or evaluation. Whatever the case, I doubt that the word data leads readers to immediately think about people. In education, we are data rich, with more measurement and information than we have ever had before. But I believe that we, as educational professionals, still do not use that information as intentionally, impactfully, or efficiently as we could. In my experience, the problem is that we are not considering the individuals involved when we gather, analyze, and respond to data. The data represents individual students, each with unique needs to consider. Therefore, if we simply sort students based on their percentages or scores on an assessment, we choose to ignore other important information about them that we have access to daily. We can’t ignore educators in this process either. Teachers and administrators, as the ones doing the gathering, analyzing, and responding to data, do so by interacting with each other.
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Your data practices are part of your organization’s culture, and your organization’s culture shapes your data practices. By reading this book, you are choosing to dig deeper into the space where data and culture intersect. You are acknowledging
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
the importance of the people—students and staff alike—who are involved in your data practices. You are simultaneously acknowledging the importance of data as an integral part of making decisions and determining what should continue or discontinue in your organization. And, most importantly, you are understanding that improving data practices is not a solo mission. It is not about taking tools or resources and dropping them into your system with the expectation that, if everyone uses them, practices will improve. Rather, it is about looking at the interactions among the many moving parts of your team, school, or district and determining how to support the people who carry out the practices.
Many organizations pride themselves on being data driven, articulating that they make their decisions through measurements and metrics. Throughout this book, I challenge the notion of being data driven. Data cannot make decisions—it can only present a set of information. To be driven by data is to be driven by the numbers themselves, not what the numbers represent. I contend that our teachers, teams, schools, and districts must shift their mindsets to be student centered. This does not devalue data practices but instead reiterates what the data we collect, analyze, and respond to represents: our students.
How do we shift from a data-driven mindset to a student-centered mindset? By better understanding the intersection of data and culture. The 5T framework I present in this book identifies five qualities of a sustainable and healthy data culture that is aligned with a student-centered mindset: (1) targeted, (2) timely, (3) trustful, (4) transparent, and (5) tenacious. Each quality in this framework is a facet of data culture to strengthen and embrace to make this shift. It is through the 5T framework that a shift in mindset leads to a shift in practice, where an abstract concept becomes a concrete action.
How This Book Is Organized
This book provides an argument for K–12 teachers, collaborative teams, and educational leaders to change how they think about and use data. Regardless of your title or where you land in your system’s organizational chart, you have the ability to be a leader in making the shift from data driven to student centered. It is my intention that, by the end of this book, you will be able to easily articulate the difference between these two mindsets and be able to share the rationale for making this important shift. The 5T framework provides a way to describe the shared values to which all levels of an organization should commit to create a sustainable and
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
healthy data culture. The many tools I share in this book provide practical ways to structure data practices to align with a student-centered mindset.
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Chapter 1 presents an argument for shifting your mindset from being data driven (focused on the data itself) to being student centered (focused on using the data to ultimately benefit the students the data represents). It also provides an overview of the 5T framework.
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Chapters 2–6 lay out the 5T framework for creating, supporting, and improving a sustainable and healthy data culture, with each chapter taking a deep dive into one specific cultural quality.
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
Chapter 2 examines the quality of being targeted. This chapter focuses on defining clear student learning outcomes and making sure any data that is collected is valid and informative. With a focus on taking impactful action, it discusses data analysis as a process that begins even before results are available.
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Associate Principal
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Chapter 3 examines the quality of being timely . This chapter discusses when assessments should occur, when analysis should follow, and how to respond in a timely way to the changing needs of students as instruction progresses. It presents several ways to improve timelines, including using different types of data-discussion formats and balancing assessment types to match the intended purpose.
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Chapter 4 examines the quality of being trustful . This chapter highlights the importance of teachers trusting each other as well as the data they collect. It identifies data norms as a way to build trust among team members and shares a validitycheck tool to ensure that teams can trust assessment items to yield data as expected. It also acknowledges that a data set only provides part of a student’s story and suggests ways to complete data stories.
Stephanie T. Smith
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Luke Spielman
Principal
Chapter 5 examines the quality of being transparent. This chapter focuses on how systems can support a commitment to high levels of learning for all students by requiring teams to include data from all students in their data analyses. Building on the previous chapter’s focus on trust, this chapter also provides guiding questions for deepening data discussions so that analysis is transparent.
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Chapter 6 examines the quality of being tenacious . This chapter digs into why meaningful goal setting is important and how tracking data over time helps teams relentlessly pursue proficiency for their students. It also addresses data loops for Tier 1 instruction and tiered intervention and extension.
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Chapter 7 focuses on assessing the needs of your organization and strategically taking next steps toward improving your data culture. Communication is an
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
emphasis of this chapter to help you prepare to lead the shift to a student-centered mindset. It also includes a process for taking concrete, incremental steps toward improvement.
As you read this book, you’ll notice some repeating features. Every chapter ends with questions for reflection. You are encouraged to pause and answer these questions before moving on to the next chapter to deepen your understanding of what you have read and place the learning directly within the context of your team, school, or district. These questions are a great way to structure a book study with others because—just like the data practices I emphasize in this book—changing data culture is not an individual endeavor.
Chapters 2–6 are each bookended with a short vignette from a teacher team to help concretely illustrate the transformation that can occur when teams use the 5T framework to shape data practices. In each of these chapters, you will also learn about and revisit a digital spreadsheet tool that I designed called the SPEED (shared pursuit to efficiently evaluate data) sheet, where I highlight specific features from the 5T framework that support the chapter’s focus.
Conclusion
It is my intention that you begin to think differently about your data practices while reading this book and consider the extent that culture and data intersect. When educational systems understand this intersection, they focus on students demonstrating their improved learning on what is most essential, rather than on simply improving numbers. They trust each other enough to be vulnerable with their data and collaboratively analyze it to take collective action to meet the needs of all students, rather than keeping data private out of fear of it being “bad” data. They use all the information available to them to complete the data story for every student, rather than letting one data source be the determining factor in decisions. This does not necessarily mean that you should or need to completely change your approach to how you gather, analyze, and respond to data (although, it is possible that some of what you read may compel you to do so). But I hope, as you process each chapter, your view of data practices becomes more connected to your organization’s culture. Remember, data doesn’t make decisions. You do.
Chapter 1 Shifting Mindset From Data Driven to Student Centered
The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.
— CARLY FIORINA
School systems have felt increased pressure to improve performance since the 1990s, when requirements for accountability were first included in legislation. Since the Improving America’s Schools Act in 1994, multiple iterations of accountability legislation have been passed (such as the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 and the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015), and flexibility has waxed and waned for more than two decades for states and school systems with waiver processes and exceptions occurring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these changes in accountability requirements, the pressure of accountability has trickled down to state education departments to revise their standards and systems of accountability, then to school systems to improve their performance data (which is now more public than ever), and then to teachers to address a widening spectrum of individual student needs on a daily basis. It is from this pressure that school systems have become hyperfocused on their data. While the increased focus on results is to be applauded, a (perhaps unintended)
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Associate Principal
consequence of these accountability requirements is that data is now viewed as the evaluative end instead of the informative means by which education can improve. Accountability has become synonymous with compliance, whereby schools and districts are motivated to improve due to the threat of losing funding or being subjected to increased state control until they demonstrate improvement. Across the United States, schools routinely focus on improving their state report card scores through school improvement plans (SIPs), devoting time, energy, people, and funding to try to improve their report card. You may be reading this and asking yourself, “What’s so bad about that? Schools are using results and trying to strategically improve. Isn’t that what we want them to do?” Of course, but it is that last bit that can be problematic. When schools primarily focus their efforts on simply improving their data without keeping their focus on students and their needs, they adopt a data-driven mindset fixed on improving public-facing results, instead of identifying and addressing root causes for those results.
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Assistant Principal
Luke Spielman
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
This chapter addresses the data-driven mindset in schools and how schools can shift to a student-centered mindset. It then explores a framework for a sustainable and healthy data culture.
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Defining and Shifting Mindst
Defining and Shifting Mindset
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Rogers, Arkansas
Many school systems pride themselves on being data driven , with the implied sentiment that they base their decisions on sound information that they have gathered and analyzed. Somewhere along the way, a mindset developed that distances— if not removes—the individuals that the data sources represent: the students (Couros, 2017).
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Luke Spielman
Principal
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines driven as “propelled or motivated by something” (Driven, n.d.). This means a school system that describes itself as data driven is motivated by data. When a system is data driven, the data becomes the goal rather than the students the data represents. In a student-centered mindset, the goal is to improve student learning, which is a far more impactful and sustainable approach to improving measurable results. Can’t we be both data driven and student centered? Likely not. George Couros (2017) argues, “When you have two focuses on what you are driven by, there will be times where one situation comes into conflict with the other.” Perhaps it is easier to look at how this mindset directly impacts school culture. Those with a data-driven mindset create a culture of compliance and view data as information to measure an outcome. On the
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
contrary, those with a student-centered mindset create a culture of collaboration and view data as information to improve the learning process.
To illustrate this point more clearly, let’s compare a data-driven mindset with a student-centered mindset. For the purposes of this comparison, in the following sections, I examine the following five questions.
1. What creates a sense of urgency within the school system?
2. How does the school system define success?
3. How does the school system create and use goals?
4. How does the school system use data?
5. What motivates the staff within the school system?
These five questions provide a concrete way for teams to directly compare a datadriven mindset with a student-centered mindset and to examine the differences in data values like urgency, success, goals, action, and motivation.
What Creates a Sense of Urgency Within the School System?
Data often takes on the role of providing supporting evidence for a claim, hypothesis, or inference by supplying measurable outcomes, comparisons, or correlations. It is used to prove or refute theories and inform decisions on whether current systems should continue as is, change, or stop altogether. The power of the information a data set can provide is second only to the power of the interpretations and inferences of those analyzing it. This power is quite evident when analysts create a sense of urgency when a set of student performance data clearly indicates a need for improvement. Where the sense of urgency lies within a school system in response to its data is also where the difference exists between a data-driven mindset and a student-centered mindset. For example, those with data-driven mindsets create a sense of urgency for improving scores. Individuals with this mindset may say, “We have to get our scores up,” “We need better reading data this year,” or “Our focus needs to be on doing better on the state test.” While these statements capture desired outcomes, they stop at simply generating better scores, without considering the students and their specific needs. This type of urgency can cause a school system to become hyperfocused on improving the outcomes measured by one specific assessment, which can lead to the abandonment of other sources of information that it should also consider when making decisions.
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Instead of focusing on improving scores, those with a student-centered mindset create a sense of urgency for improving student learning, which is why schools exist. As Richard DuFour and colleagues (2024) argue in the fourth edition of Learning by Doing, “ The fundamental purpose of the school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels (grade level or higher)” (p. 18; italics in the original). Those with student-centered mindsets create a sense of urgency for ensuring high levels of learning for students, and they use the correlated results from many assessments to provide a body of evidence on whether they have achieved this purpose. They do not focus on raising the scores of one targeted data set.
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Associate Principal
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
Another quality of those with a data-driven mindset is that they rely on the external pressure put on the system—primarily through publicly available state report cards and reports on school and district performance—as their impetus to improve. The Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) requires the inclusion of student achievement data (as measured by the annual state assessment in reading and mathematics) on each school’s report card (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). While student achievement is only one of many factors in a school’s overall rating, it likely receives the most attention from the public. Therefore, if the urgency is solely for improving school-level data, those with a data-driven mindset may only respond with schoolwide efforts that use similarly aggregated data to measure improvement. In doing so, they miss the opportunity to develop a more targeted and intentional progression toward improvement.
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Luke Spielman
Principal
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Rather than relying on external pressure to improve, those with a student-centered mindset create a sense of urgency using the internal pressure that comes from knowing students as individual learners. School-level data is a starting place for areas of improvement. Schools can go further by analyzing data sets at the grade, course, team, class, student-group, and even individual-student levels to form a more accurate diagnosis of needs and to develop and implement corresponding response plans. Teams can also infer the effectiveness of instructional strategies from this type of data analysis, allowing them to stop, start, or improve instruction as needed. Those with a student-centered mindset are like their data-driven peers in that they desire improvement on the state report card indicators and believe these report cards should be used to help identify areas of focus. However, they view improvement on these metrics as the culminating, measurable effect of their efforts to address a range of specific student needs.
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
How Does the School System Define Success?
Data is also used to define success criteria, such as by setting a benchmark score or a percentage of increase or decrease in a particular metric. When schools make efforts to improve, there is an inherent need to define what improvement actually looks like. In some situations, adequate improvement is defined for the school, such as when a state has designated a school for improvement status. Typically, this status has criteria within a required process that need to be met to exit this status. However, unless a school is required to follow an external process, it must define its own success criteria for its improvement efforts. Therefore, defining success is another area where the data-driven and student-centered mindsets can diverge.
Those with data-driven mindsets often define success as simply improving the numbers of the targe t data set. The idea is that if better numbers make up the data, then the school was successful. Because the data set used to define success is usually the annual state assessment (due to the external pressure I described in the previous section, page 9), the data is viewed mostly at the school level, with data aggregated into a single measure, such as a percentage or count of total students who met a certain score. While aggregated data can be a great first level of analysis, teams must dig deeper to get a more complete story. By only looking at school-level data, teams miss out on the nuanced needs of groups or individual students, which can, in turn, misinform their instructional decisions or their targeted improvement efforts. Those with a data-driven mindset also tend to be more shortsighted in their approach to defining success, with an emphasis on immediate improvement. Since the state assessment data tends to be the measure of success, the school may not look past the upcoming school year when planning its improvement efforts. This limitation can be seen in one approach to improving state assessment scores that many schools take, in which their focus is primarily on students who were close to meeting proficiency but didn’t quite make it. Schools with this approach align with the data-driven mindset in that they do not have improved student learn -i ng as their primary concern. It is a strategy based on probabilit y. For example, schools with this approach might argue that these “bubble students” came close to proficiency last time, so perhaps, with a little added effort, they can get them ov er the proficiency hump. Howeve r, with this approach alone, schools lack the necessary information to determine what additional support these students need to perform proficientl y. A data-driven mindset is limited because those with this mindset remain hyperfocused on the target data set they are looking to improve.
Those with data-driven mindsets often define success as simply improving the numbers of the target data set. The idea is that if better numbers make up the data, then the school was successful. Because the data set used to define success is usually the annual state assessment (due to the external pressure I described in the previous section, page 9), the data is viewed mostly at the school level, with data aggregated into a single measure, such as a percentage or count of total students who met a certain score. While aggregated data can be a great first level of analysis, teams must dig deeper to get a more complete story. By only looking at school-level data, teams miss out on the nuanced needs of groups or individual students, which can, in turn, misinform their instructional decisions or their targeted improvement efforts. Those with a data-driven mindset also tend to be more shortsighted in their approach to defining success, with an emphasis on immediate improvement. Since the state assessment data tends to be the measure of success, the school may not look past the upcoming school year when planning its improvement efforts. This limitation can be seen in one approach to improving state assessment scores that many schools take, in which their focus is primarily on students who were close to meeting proficiency but didn’t quite make it. Schools with this approach align with the data-driven mindset in that they do not have improved student learning as their primary concern. It is a strategy based on probability. For example, schools with this approach might argue that these “bubble students” came close to proficiency last time, so perhaps, with a little added effort, they can get them over the proficiency hump. However, with this approach alone, schools lack the necessary information to determine what additional support these students need to perform proficiently. A data-driven mindset is limited because those with this mindset remain hyperfocused on the target data set they are looking to improve.
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Those with a student-centered mindset define success differently: by increased growth. It is possible that the annual state assessment can measure student growth, but those with a student-centered mindset ensure their definition of success—and, therefore, their analysis—goes deeper than using an aggregate measure at the school level.
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Associate Principal
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Teams will look through a more granular lens to analyze data by class, student group, or grade level in addition to the available aggregated metrics. They emphasize creating sustainable systems of improvement that will endure beyond the current school year and use immediate data along the way to adjust and refine the improvement plan. Therefore, those with a student-centered mindset don’t have to wait until the next set of annual results to alter course to maximize student growth throughout the year. The differences in how those with each mindset define success become clear when we revisit the approach to improving state assessment scores. Those with a student-centered mindset likely take a different approach to improving state assessment scores than their data-driven colleagues. Rather than focusing on those closest to proficiency as the best bet for improvement, individuals with student-centered mindsets analyze the impact of current learning for all students. Students who are meeting or exceeding expectations have demonstrated that the team’s current instruction and supports are successful. For students who are not yet proficient, or even far from proficient, those with a student-centered mindset closely examine their current instruction and supports. Using all the information available to them, they look for evidence of what is working well and what needs to change for grade levels, classes, or individual students. Their belief is that improving the systematic instruction and supports for students will improve their learning, not just the state assessment results.
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
How Does the School System Create and Use Goals?
Hazel Green, Alabama
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Luke Spielman
Principal
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
School systems often use data when setting goals. It is common for schools to set SMART goals (strategic and specific, measurable, attainable, results oriented, and time bound; Conzemius & O’Neill, 2014) that include a measurable component to show whether a goal has been met. The manner in which goals are written and the process in which they are created and used are other ways to examine the differences between data-driven and student-centered mindsets. A school district might write a reading goal such as, “As measured by the 2026 state assessment, the number of students in grades 3–12 who meet or exceed expectations on the annual state
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
test will increase by 5 percent, compared to the 2025 state assessment.” Using this goal as an example, let’s examine the different approaches data-driven and studentcentered mindsets take with this goal.
Since those with a data-driven mindset may focus on school-level aggregate data when defining success, they often write large-scale goals that are applicable either schoolwide or districtwide. These large-scale goals provide a way for those with a data-driven mindset to respond to the external pressure I mentioned earlier. It is not uncommon for teams to write these large-scale goals through a top-down approach, whereby they inherit them from their school administrators. Schools may even inherit goals from district administrators. Those with a data-driven mindset are satisfied with simply adopting a large-scale goal, such as the reading goal example, as their own. If that goal were written as a district goal, a school might adopt the same goal and just change the grade levels to match their students. Similarly, if a school wrote this as a schoolwide goal, teams with a data-driven mindset might simply adopt it as their team goal. While it could be argued that this aligns the goals at different levels of the organization, it is a missed opportunity to further contextualize the goal’s focus on the needs of the students on the school’s campus. The shortcoming of a large-scale goal is that it can lack focus, specifically on areas of identified need. The resulting actions to achieve the goal can lack strategic planning due to this lack of focus. Schools are then susceptible to prioritizing actions that result in the most gains in the shortest amount of time or require the least amount of change.
Schools with a student-centered mindset are not satisfied with the direction a large-scale goal provides. Instead, team or individual goals are created to align with the goals that may exist at the school or district levels to supply the level of focus necessary to strategically target identified areas of need. Before creating these team or individual goals, those with a student-centered mindset ask, “Where is our greatest area of need?” or “What has the most significant impact for our students?” These reflective questions ensure that the goals are on target to maximize student growth in priority areas and help make the creation process more collaborative, leading to shared ownership of the goals. Using the example goal from before, a team might write a team SMART goal such as, “As measured by the endof-unit-1 assessment, 80 percent of students will demonstrate proficiency after initial instruction on all essential reading standards.” This SMART goal focuses on students demonstrating proficiency on essential standards within the unit. The team might write goals unit by unit or agree to keep their target at 80 percent proficiency after initial instruction for each unit. This smaller, more actionable goal is
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
still aligned with the larger school goal, with the thinking that if students are successfully proficient on essential grade-level standards, the results on the state assessment should improve. Within their goal, the team also implies that this may not be the last measure of proficiency by writing “after initial instruction.” While the goal may be to get 80 percent of students to proficiency by the end-of-unit assessment, the implication here is that those who are not yet proficient will receive an intervention to get them there.
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
How Does the School System Use Data?
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Principal
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
In addition to using data as evidence for defining success and creating goals, data can be used to generate a response. Part of data analysis is making inferences from the data and deciding on next steps. Selecting which sources of data to respond to, along with the response process itself, can lead to a system taking different steps.
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Associate Principal
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Luke Spielman
Principal
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Those with a data-driven mindset often value quantitative data (measured in numbers) over qualitative data (descriptive). Even though qualitative data sets may contain actionable information, systems with data-driven mindsets are primarily concerned with improving scores to alleviate external pressure and, therefore, will select quantitative data sets as the source for their response plans. They often view these data sets as end results or measures after actions have been completed, similar to an end-of-unit test after instruction ends. For example, an emphasis on improving scores on annual state assessments can lead to the assessment instrument driving the response process, since the data is from only one source. It is possible to be so data driven that tunnel vision develops, where teams miss, ignore, or omit information from other data sources because improving results on a targeted assessment became the end result of their response plan. While analyzing state assessment scores can provide useful information, the results often are not granular or contextual enough to provide information on what specific misconceptions or obstacles exist that prevent a student from demonstrating proficiency or on what instructional strategies proved to be most useful. Perhaps correlations could be made, but I would argue that more compelling insights could be found more efficiently by expanding data use to include more than just quantitative results from large assessments.
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Conversely, those with a student-centered mindset seek to create response plans from the most complete picture possible. This approach requires many data sources, including formal and informal classroom assessments, student observations, and even student self-assessments, to compare and confirm inferences made from data
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
sets. Those with this approach view data not just as an end result but as a starting point to inform their decisions. Those with a student-centered mindset have a results orientation that they demonstrate through an actively recursive process in which they gather, analyze, and act on data repeatedly. While they may use the results measured by a specific assessment to create a goal, the assessment tool itself does not drive the response plan. Instead, they use identified student needs to generate responses. As student needs change, so does the plan for responding to them.
For example, a group of students might have struggled with equivalent fractions when they took a formative assessment. The teacher provided support through a small group during their mathematics class to address this concept further, even though the class had turned their focus to adding fractions. At the end of the week, one student in the small group consistently and accurately created equivalent fractions. For this particular student, it would be appropriate for them to stop attending the small group on equivalent fractions and instead invest their learning time elsewhere. Keeping this student in the group just because they hadn’t demonstrated proficiency before would minimize their growth. A teacher with a student-centered mindset would feel empowered to change how they support students, basing their support on the most updated and accurate information they have on their students.
What Motivates the Staff Within the School System?
Data can be used to motivate groups or individuals. Motivation is different from the sense of urgency I discussed previously. For the purposes of this book, I view the urgency that data creates on a more systemic level, stemming from the inferences and narratives the data analysis supports. It carries with it the message, “This is what we, as a school, will turn our focus to because it is the most important, based on the compelling evidence we have.” I view motivation on a personal level, existing within individual school staff members. Motivation describes the reasons an individual will act, based on their desires.
Since those with a data-driven mindset feel external pressure to improve scores on the school level, people with this mindset feel successful if the numbers within the data improve. Because external pressure, often from the publicly available state assessment data, is at the heart of their urgency, the motivation for data-driven individuals is to avoid “getting in trouble,” either by avoiding or exiting improvement status or by preventing scores from worsening. As a way to protect themselves, those with a data-driven mindset may look at data more individualistically
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Eaton High School
Regional Principal
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
to analyze the performance of select students within their instructional responsibility (class, course, and so on). By approaching the data in this way, data-driven individuals are motivated to make their own data look good and are not concerned with a collaborative approach to data analysis or response. In fact, it is possible for data-driven teachers or administrators to create a competitive atmosphere within a team, school, or district, just in case they need to show that they at least got better results than others.
Regional Principal
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Associate Principal
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
People who are student centered feel internal pressure to know and respond to students as individuals, and they define their own success by student growth. Therefore, student-centered individuals are motivated by improving the lives of students, and they are open to working with their colleagues to collaboratively meet the needs of their learners. Rather than taking individual ownership of the data, with a feeling of “my students” and “your students,” individuals with this mindset feel collective responsibility, which they articulate by answering the question, “Now that we know this about our students, what will we do?” These individuals rely on the collective wisdom and shared expertise of their fellow teachers, sharing strategies and collaboratively doing what it takes to improve student growth.
Principal
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Table 1.1 offers a summarized comparison of a data-driven mindset versus a student-centered mindset.
Rogers, Arkansas
Tabl e 1.1 : Data-Driven Mindset Versus Student-Centered Mindset
Aransas Pass Independent
School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Urgency
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•. Improves scores
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
•. Responds to outside pressure to improve (such as the state report card)
Hazel Green, Alabama
•. Focuses on the school level
Luke Spielman
Success
Principal
•. Improves student learning
•. Responds to internal pressure to improve (such as knowing students as individual people)
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•. Focuses on the team, class, and student levels
•. Defines success by better numbers
•. Uses the school-level aggregate
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
•. Emphasizes immediate improvement (often not looking past the current school year)
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
•. Defines success by student growth
•. Uses.a.granular approach (class, student group, or grade level) as well.as the school aggregate in their decision making
•. Emphasizes long-term, sustainable systems of improvement that endure, using immediate data to adjust and refine
Goals
Data Use
•. Creates large-scale (school and district) goals
•. Asks questions like.“ Where.can.we. gain the most in.a.short amount.of. time?”
•. Uses top-down approaches
•. Usually uses quantitative.sources
•.Views.data as an end result
•. Can allow assessment instrument to drive.the.response process,.even if.used intermittently
•. Aligns team and individual goals with school and district goals
•. Asks questions like.“ Where.is.our greatest area of need?” and.“ What has the most significant impact.on our students?”
•. Collaborates with stakeholders
•. Uses many data sources as.a.body of.evidence.to.get.a.complete picture.of.individual.student needs
•.Views.data as evidence.of. effectiveness for instructional strategies
•.Views.data as the baseline,.as. well.as the means.of.monitoring progress and the end.result
•. Allows student needs to drive.the response process
•. Is concerned with making its own data look good
•. Is competitive
•. Focuses on numbers and scores
•. Is concerned with improving the lives of.students
•. Creates collective.efficacy and responsibility
•. Creates collaborative.ownership.of. data
•. Asks questions like.“ What.will.we. do now that.we.know.this?”
•. Considers all students as “our students”
•. Focuses on names and needs
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Using the 5T Framework for a Sustainable and Healthy Data Culture
Shifts in mindset lead to shifts in culture. It is not enough to have student-centered beliefs; your actions and behaviors must also align to create a sustainable and healthy data culture built on your student-centered mindset. Many school systems struggle with creating this type of culture. Some schools are data driven to the point that it feels punitive and detrimental to the culture. It is in these schools
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science
Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Hazel Green Elementary School
Aransas Pass, Texas
Regional Principal
Eaton High School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Powell River, British
Bur Oak Secondary School
Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Spring Independent School District
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Luke Spielman
Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
where staff live in fear—not in fear of having a less-than-positive impact on their students but of not meeting the articulated goal and being seen as a failure. Data ana lysis often focuses on who or what is to blame for the results, perhaps even blaming students. Some schools articulate that they are data driven, but their practices of data analysis remain at the surface level and are not action oriented. These are schools that only review data after the fact and as a reflection of what happened in the past, rather than a forward-focused analysis of “What does this compel us to get better at?” Schools stuck in this surface-level analysis often struggle with predicting what their data might look like, since there is no concrete action plan or progress monitoring to guide their improvement efforts. School systems need to balance urgency and empowerment by creating and sustaining a healthy data culture built on a student-centered mindset. Schools that adopt a student-centered mindset might not be satisfied with their results, but rather than meet their dissatisfaction with blame, they meet it with support and collaboration. In these schools, they lean into the information they can get from their data, even when the information may be difficult to accept. They respond by being grateful for the deeper understanding they now have because of this data and look forward to the opportunity to lead students toward improved learning.
Spring Independent School District
Principal
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
In the book Energize Your Teams: Powerful Tools for Coaching Collaborative Teams in PLCs at Work ® , Thomas W. Man y, Michael J. Maffoni, Susan K. Sparks, and Tesha Ferriby Thomas (2022) identify three rules for collecting and organizing data: Data should be (1) easily accessible, (2) purposefully arranged, and (3) publicly discussed. These three rules serve as foundational guidelines for the framework I propose in this book.
Stephanie T. Smith
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Assistant Principal
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
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Luke Spielman
Principal
Within the proposed framework, there are five qualities of a school system’s data culture that should be examined and supported to ultimately create a sustainable and healthy data culture. A sustainable and healthy data culture is (1) targeted, (2) timely, (3)trustful, (4) transparent, and (5) tenacious. For the data culture to be sustainable and healthy, all five qualities need to be actively present, which is why I call this the 5T framework.
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
1. Targeted: In a sustainable and healthy data culture, the data that staff members collect, analyze, and respond to has a degree of specificity to target identified student outcomes. The assessments they use to gather this data are aligned to grade-level standards. Once they gather the data, their analysis is action oriented to target specific misconceptions or readiness for extension that is supported
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
by the data set. The response plan they create is equally specific and intentionally identifies groups or individuals, their corresponding needs supported by the data, the strategies to help them progress, and the staff members who will provide this extra time and support.
2. Timely: Waiting until the end of the school year to determine whether improvement efforts were impactful is the equivalent of an instructional autopsy. It might provide some meaningful information, but there’s not much you can do to improve outcomes at that point. Instead, a more effective approach is to collect, analyze, and respond to data throughout the school year in a timely manner by using common formative assessments (CFAs) aligned to clear targets or standards. Staff administer these assessments at meaningful times in the instructional cycle to assess progress and provide information for designing their upcoming instruction. They write assessments in a way that enables them to efficiently score and analyze assessments within a few days. The timeliness of a sustainable and healthy data culture allows for a constant churn of updated information.
3. Trustful: The trust within a data culture is twofold. First, staff members must trust each other to fully embrace a collective responsibility for improving the lives of students. This type of trust can be termed vulnerability, as it is most easily observable through interactions among colleagues. It is only with mutual trust among colleagues that a student-centered mindset can fully take shape within the system. Second, there must be trust in the data itself. This type of trust can be termed validity, since data sets that accurately represent what they are supposed to measure are the data sources that build trust among those who analyze them. If staff members don’t trust the data set itself, any inferences they draw from the data come from a place of skepticism, which can severely limit the impact any response plan can have.
4. Transparent: A sustainable and healthy data culture is transparent in its access to and discussion of data. Staff are committed to including the data of all students who were administered the assessment to be able to deeply examine the data and determine student needs. Team members don’t analyze data in isolation but rather through
Amy Kochensparger
Biology Teacher and Science Department Chair
Eaton High School
Amy Kochensparger
Eaton, Ohio
Biology Teacher and Science
Ian Landy
Department Chair
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Assistant Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Eaton High School
Regional Principal
a collaborative process. With this transparency, staff embrace the student-centered mindset by first determining the areas of greatest need and then tapping into the collective expertise of the entire team.
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Stephanie T. Smith
Eaton, Ohio
qathet School District No. 47
Ian Landy
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Regional Principal
Louis Lim
qathet School District No. 47
Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Powell River, British Columbia, Canada
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Louis Lim
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Principal
Associate Principal
Bur Oak Secondary School
Assistant Principal
Luke Spielman
5. Tenacious: Collection, analysis, and response to data are parts of a committed, iterative cycle within a sustainable and healthy data culture. These are not onetime events that are separate from the day-to-day instruction that occurs within the classroom. Rather, staff members are palpably committed to ongoing monitoring and improvement based on the most accurate and updated information possible. As demonstrated through their goal setting and strategic planning, school systems with sustainable and healthy data cultures exhibit this tenacity as an embedded part of their practice.
Spring Independent School District
Markham, Ontario, Canada
Houston, Texas
Vanessa Cevallos Reyes
Associate Principal
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Spring Independent School District
Principal
Houston, Texas
Eunice Salazar-Banks
Principal
Aransas Pass Independent School District
Aransas Pass, Texas
Stephanie T. Smith
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Principal Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Luke Spielman
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Principal Park View Middle School
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Fort Worth, Texas
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Steven Weber
Chief Academic Officer
Assistant Principal
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
The 5T framework aims to clearly define the qualities that need to be consistent parts of an organization’s data practices for a student-centered mindset to prevail. Similar to a vision statement, this framework can be viewed as a future-facing set of ideals for an organization to aspire toward. Because gathering, analyzing, and responding to data are ongoing processes, you will never stop supporting and improving your data culture if it is sustainable and healthy. Therefore, your data culture is not a destination but a continuous journey. To help you on this journey, the next five chapters of this book each examine one quality of the 5T framework, providing examples, tools, and templates to support your development of these qualities within your school system.
Assistant Principal
Conclusion
Hazel Green Elementary School
Hazel Green, Alabama
Luke Spielman
Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Fort Worth, Texas
Rogers, Arkansas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
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Visit go.SolutionTree.com/schoolimprovement to download the free reproducibles in this book.
Park View Middle School
Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Ringnolda (Jofee’) Tremain
Chief Academic Officer
Without a solid and sturdy frame, a house will collapse under its own weight or during a severe storm. The same is true for your school’s data culture. Therefore, the five Ts provide the foundation on which you will build your data culture. When these five qualities permeate through the system, the culture around gathering, analyzing, and responding to data will sustain your system through times of adversity. If they do not, you may find yourself in a constant cycle of rebuilding or repairing your data culture, leaving little time for designing and implementing an impactful student-centered response plan.
East Fort Worth Montessori Academy
Fort Worth, Texas
Steven Weber
Assistant Principal
Rogers Heritage High School
Rogers, Arkansas
Stop and Reflet
The following are some questions to use for your individual reflection or collaborative discussion.
• When are times that you or your school exhibited a data-driven mindset? How would having a student-centered mindset have changed the situation?
• What parts of your current practice most align with a studentcentered mindset?
• What opportunities are there for you to shift toward a more studentcentered mindset?
• Which qualities of a sustainable and healthy data culture are areas of strength for your school? Which ones are areas for growth?
“In Shared Data, Shared Decisions, author Jason Williams reminds us that behind every number and percentage is a student with a name, a story, and limitless potential. His 5T framework offers a practical path for transforming data from cold statistics to meaningful insight that fuels collaboration and action.”
—Julie A. Schmidt Educational Consultant
“Shared Data, Shared Decisions gives tangible ways to approach data from the perspective that every data point is an opportunity to impact students.”
—Michael Shepherd
Principal, Lakeside Junior High School, Springdale, Arkansas
“Shared Data, Shared Decisions clearly outlines what strong support looks like. It helps educators reflect, grow, and collaborate by focusing on real skills like feedback, modeling, and communication. Overall, the book is a practical tool that promotes meaningful coaching and professional growth.”
Shared Shared Data, Decisions
A Student-Centered Framework for a Healthy Data Culture
T—Robert Mountjoy Educational Consultant
eachers and administrators may be collecting sufficient data, but to support learning for all, educators must ensure that their data practices purposefully acknowledge the students this information represents. In Shared Data, Shared Decisions: A Student-Centered Framework for a Healthy Data Culture , author Jason Williams provides strategic tools and templates to help educators enhance how they collect, assess, and utilize data by adopting a student-centered approach. The results are an effective framework for school improvement and a dynamic, sustainable school culture that recognizes, embraces, and encourages individual students in their respective journeys and pursuits.
Readers will:
• Identify clear student learning targets to create effective assessments for data collection
• Plan and manage time strategically to ensure efficient data collection and analysis
• Establish a culture of trust to facilitate open and honest data discussion and sharing
• Promote transparency of data to develop wellinformed, responsive action plans
• Embrace a tenacious spirit through the trials and errors of school improvement
