{"id":1896,"date":"2022-11-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carnegie25live.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2026-01-26T12:21:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T20:21:32","slug":"living-improvement-data-resources-from-the-2021-carnegie-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/living-improvement-data-resources-from-the-2021-carnegie-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"Living Improvement: Data Resources from the 2021 Carnegie Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Between August 2022 and November 2022, we will publish a series of blog posts as part of our Living Improvement: Resources for Educators\u00a0 from the 2021<\/em>\u00a0Carnegie Summit on Improvement in Education<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(and elsewhere). Resources will focus on\u00a0<\/em>leadership<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>equity<\/em><\/a>, data, and coaching. In this post, we present resources focusing on the role of data and measurement in continuous improvement.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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How do you know if a change is an improvement? This is one of the central questions \u2014 if not the<\/em> central question \u2014 of improvement science. It seems so simple, but there are many steps to get to an answer: How can data inform the identification of a problem to focus on? How can you concretely specify an aim with a measurable goal? What data can you collect about your system and practices that points towards changes that you should try? What are you measuring when you test changes? What data are needed to know if a change in practice actually impacts the aim? Districts and schools face both an abundance and a dearth of data: education professionals find themselves awash in lagging outcome data, such as standardized tests or annual attendance rates, but often lack real-time data on the changes they are making on a day-to-day basis. Schools make all kinds of changes each year, but rarely are these changes accompanied by the data and measurement tools, routines and infrastructure needed to keep track of what\u2019s working for whom and in which contexts. Evidence related to changes is too often anecdotal and too infrequently collected to allow the opportunity to learn and adjust. At its worst, data and measurement in education can contribute to a culture of anxiety and fear, which is detrimental to both learning and reform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you will see from the resources in this release, however, collecting the right data to inform our efforts can not only be informative, but empowering. \u201cEmpowering\u201d isn\u2019t a word that educators usually associate with data, but the improvers in this release are trying to change the narrative about how data are collected and used and whose voices inform those efforts. Instead of seeing the use of data and measurement only as lagging indicators that tell us what happened after the fact, the improvers in this release show us how data can be timely, insightful, and even liberating.<\/p>\n\n\n

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