Simple questions about school data

This morning, I was perusing a copy of Scholastic Administrator magazine. The article was about school data, and included this choice quote from Douglas Reeves about how school should think about data:

“For the short term, how will your data change next week’s lessons? Looking further out, what are two or three examples of how data analysis will alter instruction and assessment over the coming year?”. This is exactly the kind of thinking I like - How does (insert edu-thing here) actually impact student learning?

We are just starting to look at using student data in our school (keep in mind, I work for CUNY, not the DOE) . We are thinking about these exact questions: what type of data can we collect? How will this data improve instruction?

On 18 December 2009, Rich Platts inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

Data gathering & warehousing is one of my focuses recently for my district.  I’ve been thinking a lot about what questions need to be asked . . . What exactly was this article called?