“McDonald, Isacoff, and Karin offer a rich and authentic look into how student performance data are currently understood and how they are being used by teachers and school leaders in schools serving many students living in poverty. Additionally, they offer some general guidance for those school leaders aiming to engage in more effective related practices. In doing so, they communicate well the notion that effective data use in teaching is a highly worthwhile, but also a highly complex and resource-intensive, endeavor. We anticipate that Data and Teaching: Moving Beyond Magical Thinking to Effective Practice will be an engaging and thought-provoking read for school leaders looking to more effectively integrate data into their teaching practices.”
― Teachers College Record
" an accessible, illuminating read that will prove valuable to school leaders, entrepreneurs, teachers, and researchers. The school portraits featured are captivating and complex, and the “New Direction” sections sandwiching each of these portraits offer pithy, actionable avenues for administrators and practitioners looking to shift the way they do things in schools"
—Harvard Educational Review
“ Data and Teaching: Moving Beyond Magical Thinking to Effective Practice is a guide created especially for professionals and policymakers in the field of education working to improve underachieving schools…highly recommended, especially for public and college library education shelves.”
-- Midwest Book Review
“Data-informed instruction is likely to miss the mark without room for teacher innovation and design. By combining rigorous observation of educators and administrators, and innovative ideas around data use, the authors bring this notion to life. They provide a detailed and fascinating account of how distributive leadership, collaboration, and professional learning can greatly and positively influence teachers’ effective use of data in teaching, while promoting educational equity.”
—Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers
“Through rigorous and revelatory portraits this wise and probing book documents the ways that teachers use various data sources to inform and shape their pedagogy, to deepen their knowledge of their students, and to nourish relationships of trust and commitment that are at the heart of learning. Data and Teaching offers a rare and subtle blend of generous witnessing, discerning analysis, and practical directives for educational innovation and improvement.”
—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, professor, Harvard University
"An authentic and empirical analysis of a current fad–data-based decisionmaking–anchored in a careful and sophisticated conceptualizing of teaching as a practice. There is no magical thinking in this analysis, but rather a careful and systematic exploration of how teaching might and can be informed by a new mantra for improvement: data-based decisionmaking. Essential reading for anyone committed to improving teaching as either a practical or an intellectual matter."
—James Spillane, professor, Northwestern University
“Finally, a book on using data to improve schools that goes beyond a theoretical framework and explores what really happens when teachers try to do this work. This book uses case studies to illuminate the conditions where data lifts teaching and learning, and where data actually causes harm. Every school and district should read it.”
—Ron Berger, chief academic officer, EL Education
