Data News

"Using Data is providing us with longer-term solutions based on research. There is no short-term fix to make up for the inequities and to transform learning. When the process is right, the payoff will come."

Mary Wermers, Curriculum Director

What's New

TERC's Diana Nunnaley to present at Council for Opportunity in Education's 31st Conference

Session Title: Joy of Data: Using, Formatting, and Analyzing Student and National Data to Improve Student Achievement

Presenters: Mary Anne Mather, Stephanie Miller, Diana Nunnaley

Date: Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Time: 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM

About This Session: The effective use of data can help educators improve student outcomes and streamline supportive services. The effective use of data involves the collaboration of stakeholders who can raise key questions, investigate and examine trends in data, test their hypothesis, and make important decisions. In this session, learn how to build your program's capacity to collaborate to use data effectively, to formulate and ask critical questions, and answer them using student and national-level data. You will also learn to use The Pell Institute's Retention Toolkit to track the persistence of low-income students at your institution and identify any gaps in success that need to be addressed. Also on the panel is Stephanie Miller, Senior Data Analysist, at The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

TERC's Mary Anne Mather to present at Council for Opportunity in Education's 31st Conference

Session Title: 6/30. Using Data to Ask Important Questions and Improve Your Outcomes (Part 1 and Part 2)

Presenter: Mary Anne Mather

Date: Thursday, September 6, 2012

Time: Part 1 from 10:45 AM to 12:00 PM; Part 2 from 2:30 PM to 3:45 PM

About This Session: Learn to identify and form important questions regarding student and program outcomes using data. The emphasis is on forming meaning and measurable questions. Participants will gain understanding of how data can be used to not only identify problems, but to also help students and staff identify their strengths and talents. The starting point is assisting participants in generating their own questions.

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TERC's Diana Nunnaley to present at 25th Annual STATS-DC 2012 Data Conference

Session Title: Evaluation of Using Data Professional Development Program: Year 1 Implementation, Fidelity, and Evaluation Design.

Presenters: Linda Cavalluzzo, Laura Holian, and Diana Nunnaley

Date: Thursday, July 12, 2012

Time: Concurrent Session VI from 11:00 to 12:00

About This Session: As states and districts increase the collection of student data, teachers are asked to use, interpret, and analyze data frequently. There are many books and professional development programs that purport to help teachers make use of student data to improve instruction and student achievement (Boudett, City, and Murnane 2010; Bernhardt 2009; Love 2008), but there is little rigorous evaluation of these programs. This randomized controlled trial of the Using Data professional development program was funded by the Institute for Education Sciences in 2010. This presentation describes the Using Data intervention, analysis plan, and preliminary Year 1 descriptive findings.

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TERC’s Diana Nunnaley Joins Professional Development Leaders at Gates-Sponsored Meeting on Effective Use of School Data

Diana Nunnaley, TERC’s Using Data Director, was invited to participate in a data literacy meeting sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Meeting organizers Ellen Mandinach of WestEd and Edith Gummer of Education Northwest brought together a diverse group of education experts to create a common understanding of data literacy and provide a foundation for teacher preparation in using data to improve student learning. Nunnaley was one of eight professional development providers at the gathering held May 3 and 4, 2012, which also included researchers and policy makers.

“It was reaffirming to participate in discussions that focused on what teachers need to know to do this work, ” said Nunnaley. “Teachers have to be put at the center of the process so that real change can occur at the point of instruction, and the meeting really underscored that point.”

Nunnaley was selected to attend the meeting because of the groundbreaking work TERC initiated over a decade ago in the development of the Using Data program. She has helped to hone and streamline the process of ‘collaborative inquiry’ that engages teachers in cycles of targeted data analysis. TERC’s Using Data team has worked in over 23 states, hundreds of districts and schools nationwide building teacher-led data teams and facilitating data analysis techniques and instructional improvement steps that result in increased student achievement.