Jefferson is a highly reflective school that makes decisions based on data. It is inventive in hand-computing and analyzing data that the district does not collect.

In her first year as principal, Dr. Stack started a data-driven school improvement effort. She used staff development days to go over student performance data by subject area, identifying strengths and weaknesses and then engaging the staff in setting improvement strategies. The effort during the first year, according to Dr. Stack, was "quite elementary." In the second year, "we started using the data and designing more creative data bases." At that time, the school lacked support from the district to disaggregate data by race, socioeconomic status, and gender, so the staff became resourceful, manually. As a result of their data analyses, the staff refined their global goal of "improving academic achievement" to focus more narrowly on improving reading comprehension levels, an area of critical need. From "improving school climate," they zeroed in on lowering their unacceptably high suspension rates and decreasing missed instructional time. They focused their goal of "increased parent involvement" on sixth grade parents in particular, quickly increasing extremely low attendance at school meetings by 100 percent.

Why the emphasis on data? The school is dedicated to helping every student do the best he or she can to achieve. The data the administration and staff collect and analyze serve as the basis for school decision-making. Data give evidence of need, of improvement, and of success or failure. "Sleuthing the data," as Dr. Stack puts it, helps the school be accountable to itself and to its public about the school's progress in making its vision a reality.

Collecting data also gives the school political clout. Central office staff says, "Carol always has her ducks in a row." For instance, when Dr. Stack requested an additional reading position, she presented data to demonstrate the need and promised feedback. Says a district administrator, "She said, 'Give me the position and I will show you results in terms of growth.' She came in with data, a plan, a feedback schedule, and her expectations for year-end results, and she got the new position."

When Jefferson Middle School set a goal of reducing instructional time lost because of discipline referrals, it began by collecting data. Staff members tracked the amount of time that transpired between a referral and a decision about consequences. As a result, students are not wasting time out of class sitting in the office waiting for administrative disposition. In addition, the school registered demographic information about each referral (gender, race, school lunch status, length of time in the school) and the name of the teacher, among other categories. Administrators share this information at faculty meetings and brainstorm about why the referral happened and what to do. When necessary, they counsel individual teachers. The central office adopted this approach and now generates reports based on information about discipline referrals. All schools in the district now collect this information, under the following categories

• incident (e.g., arson, misuse of computers, disobedience, extortion, theft, threats to staff, threats to students, etc.)
• time duration for discipline (i.e., the total in which the student misses instruction)
• action (e.g., apology to class, detention, parent conference, referral to guidance, team conference)

as well as codes for ethnicity, certain exceptions (special education), time of day, and location. Dr. Stack says, "You really have to be a data freak to get into this." Data freak or not, Dr. Stack and her staff set an example for the district, and the district responded by providing appropriate supports for all its schools.

Jefferson reduced its suspension rate by one-third in one year.

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