ABSTRACT: The recent press for high-stakes accountability has challenged
school leaders to use data to guide the practices of teaching and learning. This
article considers how local school leaders build data-driven instructional systems
to systematically improve student learning. Such systems are presented as a
framework involving data acquisition, data reflection, program alignment and integration,
program design, formative feedback, and test preparation. The article
reviews data collected in a yearlong study of four schools to describe how leaders
structure opportunities to engage in data-driven decision making.