Beyond Test Scores: Leading Indicators for Education

"Leading indicators"--indicators that provide early signals of progress toward academic achievement--enable education leaders, especially at the central office level in a school district, to make more strategic and less reactive decisions about services and supports to improve student learning. These indicators are a way of viewing and using data to inform systemwide decisions about education. This study builds on existing efforts by school districts to use "data-informed decision making" by developing further the concept of "leading indicators." The study described in this report focused on four districts that are at the forefront of the field in using data to inform decisions and examined how these districts are developing and using leading indicators for education. The study aimed to: (1) identify and describe the leading indicators used in four districts considered advanced in their use of data; (2) more broadly examine the infrastructure, resources, and supports each district has developed to support its use of data for decision making; (3) look beyond student measures (though these are critically important) to other measurable areas, especially the effectiveness of central office practice; and (4) bring representatives from these four districts together to review initial findings and help develop the work of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University in the area of leading indicators and data-informed decision making. By describing how these four districts--Hamilton County (Chattanooga, Tennessee), Montgomery County (Maryland), Naperville (Illinois), and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania)--have developed and used leading indicators within the context of a strong district "data culture," the Annenberg Institute hopes both to catalogue specific indicators that have been useful to these districts in increasing student achievement and to expand the notion of a leading indicator beyond easily identified testing data to more difficult-to-measure but important measures such as student engagement and central office practice. Research Protocols are appended. (Contains 1 figure and 2 footnotes.) [For companion reports, see "Using College Admission Test Scores to Clarify High School Placement. Leading Indicator Spotlight" (ED533116), "Early Reading Proficiency. Leading Indicator Spotlight" (ED533115), and "Pre-Algebra and Algebra Enrollment and Achievement. Leading Indicator Spotlight" (ED533119).]