Education 686 - Making Sense of School Data

This course helps students develop a framework for the collection, analysis, and use of school data for educative decision-making. It investigates data-driven decision-making: its theory, its obligations under NCLB, and as a normative professional standard.

Students will be exposed to applied methods for analyzing educational data at the classroom, school and system-level to affect change in their roles as education professionals. Students will be walked step-by-step through the process of understanding data, descriptive analyses, creating visual displays, and effectively communicating results to stakeholders through memos. All analyses and visualization will be taught in class in Excel. No previous knowledge of Excel necessary.