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The scenarios that illustrate each chapter come from two case studies, one based on a K-8th grade scenario and the other a 9th-12th grade setting. Data Wise grounds its discussion in examples from those contexts, keeping the material accessible and focused on realistic problems and solutions. Data Wise's process depends on collaboration and full faculty participation. With a sympathetic understanding of the inevitable limits on staff time, the authors discuss the best ways to structure collaborative faculty time and include three protocols to involve faculty and staff in gaining insight from data.

Many professional development efforts are organized as a smorgasbord of courses offered to educators. The district measures the effort's effectiveness by how many courses staff complete or how satisfied teachers are with the classes offered. District leaders who use the smorgasbord approach may view professional development as an extra that potentially helps an individual's performance but is not absolutely essential. They probably invest little in professional development planning because they don't expect great results.

Other district leaders recognize how much professional learning contributes to the district's learning goals for students, and so they align individual, team, school, and system learning plans. At each level, participants consider what outcomes they want for students, the knowledge and skills teachers need, and the professional learning that will help staff achieve the system goals. To be results-driven means following Stephen Covey's advice (1989): "Begin with the end in mind." Once student outcomes are selected, professional development leaders identify the knowledge and skills adults need to help students achieve the district's standards of success. The knowledge and skills linked to the student learning goals become part of the comprehensive professional development curriculum

In too many schools, staff development is limited to teachers attending workshops, courses, and conferences. School districts can no longer afford staff development efforts that are predominately "adult pull-out programs." That kind of learning alone will not produce high-level results. Schools will achieve high levels of performance when professional learning is embedded in every school day.

As school districts embark on the change process, they face many barriers to the adoption of data-driven decision making. School district leaders have not embraced continuous improvement. Priorities are not clear and goals are not tied to measurable objectives. Data is not collected uniformly between organizations and over time. Outdated technology cannot be used effectively. Educators lack training to define data requirements and apply data. Stakeholders do not trust the data collected or how it will be used.

Reports need to be timely, tied to objectives, and available to people with the responsibility and ability to act on them. Data reports that show data in different ways such as tables, charts, graphs, and trends enable more people to access and understand the information. Some of the decisions that might be made with data reports include: Tracking student achievement for diagnosis and placement Changing beliefs and attitudes that all students can learn Guiding teacher professional development Linking interventions to results Using data to create school improvement plans and assess progress Allocating district resources

The IT infrastructure underpinning most data-driven decision making systems requires a significant investment in hardware, software, implementation, and maintenance.