Building a Data Culture—Unorthodox Tidbits from a Former Practitioner and Current Data Strategy Consultant

By Sarah Singer, Director, Education Solutions, PowerSchool

Data can transform educational practice. More than ever, especially in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, data is needed to understand where students are in their learning.

But the effective use of data throughout an organization doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes building a culture of data, including belief systems, norms, practices, and routines. And culture building is not easy to do. If done well, however, strategic priorities and accompanying plans are infinitively more likely to succeed.

As Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

I want to start by saying I formerly oversaw a division in a large public school system that housed Research, Accountability, Assessment, and Strategic Planning. When I first took that role, I was determined to build a data culture. I was young and excited, pushing to create a “data culture revolution.”

On the plus side, because people always appreciate passion, they fed off that energy. But, in reflection, my data culture initiative was sort of a middle-tier priority for the district, at best. Urgent needs and other strategic priorities initially received more time and attention.

I also realized that my passion alone was not enough to carry the day. Our systems were people-dependent, wrought with single points of failure. If any one key person left, the whole data culture was ready to crumble. Culture, which transcends the act of one or a few individuals, needs to permeate the masses. I made progress for sure but did not quite get there.

Fast forward several years later to the present. By having held various roles in education, I have now had the opportunity to work across the U.S. with many other districts on data strategy and data culture. Through this work, I have come to better understand some of the components that make up a data culture. Below, I have articulated just a few of these.

1. Building a data culture by itself will always be a mid-tier priority at best; the key is to attach data use to the highest priorities. At the end of day, improving graduation rates, or ensuring that graduating students are prepared for CCLR (College, Career, and Life Readiness), will take precedence. Urgent items like staffing shortages due to COVID will also always be a priority. I’ve learned that the key is that data is a means to an end. For example, reviewing and monitoring data helps to improve third grade reading scores and graduation rates. Embedding data practices within key strategic priorities should be the first step for any practitioner looking to build data culture.
2. Data’s primary role can’t be punitive. Accountability is important, but if the dominant use of data in your system is to hold educators “accountable” for their actions or lack thereof, they will develop a troubled relationship with data. Without exception, data should primarily be framed as one tool to support educators as they work to improve students’ lives.
3. Structured systems are necessary to build educator competence and confidence. If data culture is lacking, the best way to build momentum is to ensure that your district and school builds in the time and space for groups of educators to collaborate around problems of practice. Structures such as professional learning communities, freshman success teams, or school improvement planning teams are examples. These teams can then build into their meeting routines the use and monitoring of data. This, in turn, will build organizational competence and confidence with data. More importantly, it will ensure better student outcomes.
4. Optimize educators’ time. Educators should not be wasting time with outdated spreadsheets, or filters on spreadsheets. They should not be going to three or four platforms to review data (assessment platforms, attendance, or behavior, for example, which often all sit in different systems). My feeling is that it’s a colossal waste of time for educators to search for the data they need, to filter it to their liking, or to put in a data request and wait several weeks for a partial answer to their data questions. Time is the most precious resource in education. The good news is that technology can handle data analytics more efficiently—and better—than humans. Teachers should spend their time doing what they do best, which is to teach children. We should set up systems that remove any obstacle that prevents them from doing what they do best.
5. Invest in an up-to-date analytics platform. To make all the above happen, invest in the right data platform. The platform is “the engine” for a district’s data culture and the car will not run without a well-functioning engine. Too many districts are stuck with outdated modes, such as spreadsheets, shared drives, or even BI (Business Intelligence) tools. Your platform should bring together disparate data sources to create a one-stop data shop. This will help educators correlate data and make meaningful connections across domains. Your dashboards should be in real-time and give you the ability to drill down to the student level. Critically, there should be no “wait time” for the data educators need. PowerSchool Unified Insights is an example of this type of platform. Alone, it will not build your data culture for you. But having this tool sets you on the right path.
6. Lead with the assumption that educators are the smartest people on the planet. I’m serious. There’s hesitancy in some districts to provide educators access to data. My belief is that once educators are provided with the tools and the space to collaborate—and have the competence and confidence to use data—they will do amazing things. They’ll support students in ways that a central office administrator or policymaker never would have dreamed possible. Initially, educators will rely on the structured systems available to them, but eventually their confidence grows and they will find ways to impact students’ lives in their own time and in their own organic ways.

Whitepaper: From Sight to Vision: How Data Can Contribute to Personalization and Preparedness in K-12 Education

About the Author:

Sarah Singer, Director, Education Solutions, Powerschool

Sarah Singer has spent the past five years in Education Technology and at PowerSchool is often called upon to discuss the topic of analytics and specifically and how they can be used drive student, school and district success. Prior to her career in Education Technology, Sarah worked at Portland Public Schools in Portland, Oregon, where she last oversaw a division that housed Research, Accountability, Assessment and Strategic Planning. She also led a large initiative to redesign the High School System, resulting in a 21 percentage point increase in graduation rates. Prior to Portland Public Schools, Sarah spent six years as management consultant for Deloitte Consulting. Sarah lives near Portland, Oregon with her partner and two children.