Sorry, I'm entering the discussion a bit late. My email has been  
asnarl for the last couple of days.

I am, like Sandy Struck, a product of Pennsylvania's program  
improvement process, Project Equal, and I was for a number of years a  
trainer in using data for decision making. The heart of this training  
was to help programs to describe, in detail, an area for improvement  
within their program,  to ask a question based on that particular  
area of concern, to look at program data that related to the problem  
area, to come to some conclusions based on the data, and then to take  
actions that would result in program improvement. This sounds very  
simple, but in fact, it was a hard road for all of us, and there were  
difficulties at every step.

In the beginning people (most of us) tended to ask questions that  
were too broad (or too narrow) or too vague, and we tended to look at  
aggregated data only --and even when there was data enough to draw  
conclusions from, our action plans often seemed to have little  
relation to those conclusions. In short, learning to use data for  
program improvement was a surprisingly slow process, and involved the  
creation of a habit of mind that was not at all "second nature" to  
most of our program directors and their staffs.

I think that our tendency now is to think that using data for making  
program decisions is just common sense--but I think it's a more  
complex issue. And one that has implications for professional  
development at all levels.

I would say that over time some of the programs I worked with  
developed the habit of using data for decision making, and that  
others reverted back to decision making by intuition--as Sandy said  
there's rarely a dearth of opinions in our programs.


Karen Mundie
Associate Director
Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council
100 Sheridan Square, 4th Floor
Pittsburgh, PA  15206
412 661-7323 (ext 101)
kmundie at gplc.org

GPLC - Celebrating 25 years of literacy, 1982-2007


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