DECISION MAKING

Decision Making



Decision Making

Introduction

As the 21st century unfolds, two intertwined terms are becoming, if not house hold words, schoolhouse phrases: "data-driven decision making" and "scientifically based research." Both are a part of the No Child Left Behind Act, but they are not important because NCLB includes them. The federal act includes them because they are important. Data-driven decisions and scientifically based research are becoming a part of the culture of education.

Taken for granted in the high-tech world, the terms are coming of age in the education community. It is about time. Such sensible ideas are long overdue. And today rare is the educator who has not heard about them and rarer yet the policy analyst or politician from whose tongue the terms have not trippingly fallen. This is as it should be, particularly insofar as their opposite means purely subjective decision making. Evidence and the data that comprises them are to be preferred to flying by the seat of your pants. And as knowledge is power, data are its raw material. The systematic use of data lies at the heart of scientific method, which is why the two ideas connect. (Eddy 1982 pp. 249-267)

Abundant Knowledge, Better decision

The opportunity and the challenge facing today's education decision maker is to move beyond decision making by intuition to what I have begun to call knowledge-based decision making. By this I include data-driven decision making but I mean more than that. Today's education leader, whether the leader of the school district, the school building or the classroom, must change data into knowledge, transform knowledge into wisdom and use wisdom as a guide to action. But if data-driven decision making and scientifically based research are the necessary preconditions to wise decision making, they are not sufficient. True, without data and solid evidence the modem decision maker is helpless, but simply possessing data and evidence is no guarantee of success. (Hennessey Amabile 1998 674-675)

There are three reasons. First, as every educator knows, schools are awash in data. At times it feels as though the data are an endless skein. What is abundantly clear is that without purposeful organization and the capacity for nearly instantaneous recall and analysis, even the most abundant data are virtually useless. Indeed, disorganized or inaccessible data have little or no value. And nowhere is Parkinson's last law-"delay is the deadliest form of denial"--more apt. The most extreme example is the state-mandated test taken in the spring with results not available until the following fall. And in a larger context, few schools have the information technology infrastructure, including hardware, software and trained personnel, to take advantage of the power inherent in school data. (Gardner 1995 pp.119-121)

Second, for most educators, data have been and remain a burden, not an asset. Compliance data are used for precisely that--to see whether you hewed to the rules and regulations. Historically, education data were something a third party told you to gather so they could embarrass you with it ...