Student data are gaining increased attention in education, spurred by accountability policies such as those contained in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation. Student data are useful for informing classroom practice, and userfriendly technologies for organizing and accessing data are enabling access by all teachers. In this study, we examine the efforts of three schools to involve entire faculties in the examination of student data, supported by efficient data systems. Results indicate the importance of administrative supports in fostering such use. Data use often resulted in improved teaching practice such as collaboration, better knowledge of student needs, and efficiency of effort. These results are discussed in light of previous research.

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In the United States, effective data use is proving to be a vexing problem. In response, scholars have recently begun viewing this as a systemic problem, believing there are actions a school district may take to make data use more efficient and tenable throughout the organization. In this article, we add to the knowledge of how school organizations can more effectively use data for educational improvement. Through the lens of the Data-Informed District, we leverage the research on organizational improvement and data use to discuss 3 specific organizational areas in which these districts may improve: establishing common understandings, professional learning for using data, and computer data systems.

In the present study, an examination is conducted in three school districts of how data are used to improve classroom practice.  In doing so, we explore the effects that attitudes toward data, principal leadership, and computer data systems have on how data are used to affect classroom practice.  Findings indicate that educators are ambivalent about data: they see how data could support classroom practice, but their data use operates in the presence of numerous barriers.  Many of these barriers are due to principal leadership and computer data systems; these barriers often have negative effects on attitudes toward data and disrupt the progression from using data to inform classroom practice.  It is hypothesized that many of these barriers can be removed through effective district policies to improve structures and supports for using data.

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Education.In The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman (2005) describes how decades pass between discoveries and the practical productivity gains from them. Two examples are illustrative: (1) the ability to generate and distribute electricity evolved in the 1890s, yet it was 30 years before electric motors produced widespread productivity increases, and (2) computer technologies began evolving in the 1940s toward the productivity gains given by our current worldwide information systems. In both cases, multiple vectors had to converge beyond the initial inventions in order to produce the vibrant U.S. economy of the twentieth century and the world economy of the twenty-first century.In the case of the ongoing productivity increases from the computer/information revolution, Friedman's first "convergence" was of rapidly evolving computer hardware with the subsequent development of "work flow software." This allowed businesses to move information much more rapidly. Friedman (2005, 177) notes that, while such a convergence can be valuable in isolation, "the big spurts in productivity come when a new technology is combined with new ways of doing business." In the case of the information economy, these include the integrated use of sophisticated computers and the evolution of large, sophisticated data "warehouses" to "flatten" not only macro-level world businesses but also the work lives and productivity of an unexpectedly wide array of persons. He documents this spread of data use and subsequent increases in productivity in contexts ranging from the U.S. Army to Wal-Mart.Education has been relatively slow in coming to the rapidly evolving worlds

The abuse of volatile solvents, or inhalants, is an enduring problem among adolescents although a number of factors obscure the nature and extent of this drug using behavior. The data presented here indicate that a number of social and perceptual correlates of inhalant use operate similarly across Mexican American, American Indian and non-Latino white adolescents. Peer factors appear to dominate, although they are somewhat less important for Mexican American and Indian youth. Increased perception of harm reduces inhalant use for all groups. Of particular significance in the findings here are the continued increase of inhalant use among females compared to males and the strong pattern of decreases in inhalant use among American Indian adolescents over the last decade. A number of implications for increased effectiveness of prevention are discussed.

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