Overview - MoEdu-SAIL

“Know thy impact.”
Hattie, 2012

“What teachers do matters.”
Hattie, 2009

When educators engage in Data-Based Decision-Making (DBDM), they “make visible” the relationships between what educators do and the outcomes experienced by their students.

This lesson aligns with the DBDM PLM that has been developed for use by academic collaborative teams, with only slight modifications to the Practice Profile and Self-Assessment Practice Profile to make it more compatible for use with schoolwide behavior teams, Building Leadership Teams (BLTs) or District Leadership Teams (DLTs) to make decisions affecting both academic and behavioral outcomes. This lesson provides an overview of DBDM with an emphasis on behavior and school climate. DBDM can occur at the district level and at the building level where Building Leadership Teams (BLTs) make decisions about school improvement goals or plan schoolwide behavior interventions; or at the grade or content area level as grade or content alike Collaborative Teams engage in DBDM to make instructional decisions that improve the academic and behavioral outcomes for the students they serve. In addition, teams will use DBDM to select targeted and intensive interventions for small groups and individual students, respectively. Information regarding DBDM for Targeted and Intensive interventions are provided elsewhere on the VLP.

In this lesson, we will review why DBDM is important. Next, we will discuss questions that all DBDM processes should answer. Then, we will introduce the Essential Functions of the DBDM Practice Profile, and show how these essential functions help us to answer the DBDM questions. The GAINS acronym will be shared as a mnemonic for remembering each of the DBDM Essential Functions. DBDM will be “unpacked” using the essential functions and GAINS as the guiding structure. Once we have dug into DBDM and the Essential Functions, we will provide an example of a team using data in a real school setting to demonstrate these Essential Functions in action. Finally, we will provide guiding questions and next steps to assist educators as they implement DBDM in their schools and districts.