Improve Teachers' 'Data Literacy,' Education Groups Urge

Teachers need better access to a wide range of data about their students, as well as more training to help them effectively use that information in the classroom, says an education-advocacy nonprofit that has championed the need for improved data collection and sharing in K-12 school systems.

The Washington-based Data Quality Campaign has issued a new policy brief intended to promote improved "data literacy" among educators. The document is the result of a yearlong collaboration involving prominent organizations such as the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, and the National Education Association, which is the country's largest teachers' union. In an interview with Education Week, Paige Kowalski, the Data Quality Campaign's director of state policy and advocacy, described the focus on teachers as the natural outgrowth of recent efforts by the federal government and others to encourage states to adopt more comprehensive systems for tracking student performance over time and sharing that data with educators. "It became very clear that while these systems are starting to come online now, teachers aren't being prepared to engage in data in a meaningful way," Kowalski said.