Study Gives First Look at Data's Impact on Districts

Promising results emerge from study of 59 districts

A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is among the first to examine the effectiveness of a data-driven effort to improve schooling on a large scale, and it's good news for data advocates: Even the first steps of data-driven instruction seem to have some positive impact on school districts' test scores.

The report focuses on 59 districts in Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, examining their mathematics and reading results on state standardized tests after the first year of a three-year initiative conducted by the Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.

The study is drawing attention as much for its design as its results. While most randomized studies in education are conducted at the individual, school, or class level, researchers for this study randomly assigned entire districts either to experimental or control groups, which allowed a controlled comparison of districtwide changes in student...