In my last piece as a guest contributor, we covered the critical need to have actionable data to help our systems navigate through and beyond the COVID 19 pandemic. The title, To Set Your Course, You Must First Know Where You Are, applies to the following four data domains that we work in as professional educators: demographic, perceptual, contextual, achievement.

Most schools are good, defined as providing the expected opportunities leading to expected achievement for children. The opportunity gap is created by factors either outside of a school’s control or at the maximum, factors schools can influence but cannot control. The question then becomes, what happens inside of those very few exceptional schools where we see student achievement at levels the school’s demographic would not predict?