Ed Data

Federal and state policies such as the US Department of Education’s Race to the Top state grant competition and Illinois’ Performance Evaluation Act of 2010, which prioritize building effective principal and teacher evaluations systems to improve student achievement outcomes, have ratcheted up the need for data-driven teacher evaluation in Illinois. This renewed attention on improving student achievement outcomes has the education sector exploring innovative tools to use for evaluation. Chicago Public Schools’ Excellence in Teaching program, led by Education Pioneers Alumna Sheri Frost Leo (’...

There is a movement underfoot to evolve the use of data in education. The transformation will enable practitioners, policy-makers and leaders to use data to drive decisions everywhere from the classroom, to the board room, to the halls of the legislature. The push, heavily motivated by federal funding initiatives such as the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, and major education reform philanthropies, seeks to accelerate the rate of improvements in education and the number of United States students succeeding in school, career and life. Recently, the Annual Progress Report on State Data...