In almost all schools, no effective feedback mechanism or validation process is available for comparing individual short-term actions with long- term institutional goals.”

– Grant Wiggins & Jay McTighe
Schooling by Design

The collection and thoughtful analysis of data on student learning…is more than a best practice in schools. It is a fundamental responsibility of good schools.”

– NAIS Commission on Accreditation,
Data-Informed Decision Making Committee

It’s not just about the data.

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe are right. The NAIS Committee on Data-Informed Decision Making is right. But it’s not just about the data.

It’s about a system of accurate, actionable feedback, because decision-making without organized feedback is nothing more than educated guesswork.

It’s about professional, collaborative inquiry, because data alone does not create knowledge. Knowledge for continuous improvement is created through the conversations of experienced educators engaging with meaningful information in a norms-based, collaborative structure.

It’s about effective data leadership, because sustainable, data-informed school improvement requires strategically designed systems of support which can only come from leadership.

Taken together, it’s about weaving a strategic, sustainable mix of those elements to make community-engaged, mission-driven improvement not just possible, but a permanent fixture of school culture.

Making sense of
the new NAIS Accreditation Standard

Criterion-13

from “Best Practice” to
“Fundamental Responsibility”

Read the article

Whether you need to meet the requirements of NAIS’s new accreditation data standard, Criterion-13, measure your school’s performance against its mission statement or strategic plan, or simply get a better handle on the information you need to move forward, one thing is sure:

You can’t do it with data alone.

Whatever your goal in using data and feedback to improve school performance, ISIS has the tools and resources to help you stay on course in making the decisions that can lead to the mission-driven improvements you seek.