OM 526 - Leveraging Technology for Decision Making

This course is organized around effective systems that enable the school leader to gather and analyze several types of data related to demographics, student and staff perceptions, assessments of student learning, and the school’s level of functioning on multiple dimensions. Aspiring principals gather and analyze data sources such as formative and summative test results, teacher and student absence rates, parent involvement in school activities, suspension and detention rates, free and reduced lunch statistics, school climate surveys, and faculty surveys such as TELL MA in order to think more carefully about interacting factors in the school environment and the impact one or several of them might have on decision making. Using various tech systems–school-based student information systems, MA ESE portals, formative assessment data bases–aspiring principals use student data to disconfirm their own hypotheses and those of others regarding factors contributing to the quality of the school environment and its outcomes and the degree to which some or all of the factors need to be accounted for in the analysis of existing policies and procedures and the formulation of new ones. Working with the mentor principal, aspiring principals use the data they gather to propose a plan to improve one or several of the following–student academic or behavioral outcomes or parent and community involvement at the school.

(Cr: 3