From Dartboards to Dashboards: The Imperative of using Data to Improve Student Achievement

Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise: Video Recording from 11/3/2011 event featuring Aimee Guidera, "From Dartboards to Dashboards: The Imperative of using Data to Improve Student Achievement"

"From Dartboards to Dashboards: The Imperative of using Data to Improve Student Achievement"

Aimee Guidera, Director of the National Data Quality Campaign, delivered the second annual Lee Gurel '48 Lecture in Education, "From Dartboards to Dashboards: The Imperative of Using Data to Improve Student Outcomes." Aimee Rogstad Guidera is the Founding Executive Director of the Data Quality Campaign. She manages a growing partnership among national organizations collaborating to improve the quality, accessibility and use of education data to improve student achievement. Working with 10 Founding Partners, Aimee launched the DQC in 2005 with the goal of every state having a robust longitudinal data system in place by 2009. The Campaign is now in the midst of its second phase focusing on State Actions to ensure effective data use. Aimee joined the National Center for Educational Accountability as Director of the Washington, DC office in 2003. During her eight previous years in various roles at the National Alliance of Business, Aimee supported the corporate community's efforts to increase achievement at all levels of learning. As NAB Vice President of Programs, she managed the Business Coalition Network, comprised of over 1,000 business led coalitions focused on improving education in communities across the country. Prior to joining the Alliance, Aimee focused on school readiness, academic standards, education goals and accountability systems while in the Center for Best Practices at the National Governors Association. She taught for the Japanese Ministry of Education in five Hiroshima high schools where she interviewed educators and studied the Japanese education system immediately after receiving her AB from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs. Aimee also holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Perceived Pathways of Success

Researchers throughout the years have been challenged to go beyond aspects such as environment and socioeconomic status in the search for school-level characteristics that make a difference in student achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that play a role in how students develop their personal source of motivation, and consequently, how it pushes them to succeed academically. Through interviews with student volunteers, undergraduates and graduates were asked about their personal journey to defining academic success for themselves, and how their cultural background and values have both affected this pathway to such a development. How they narrated where their motivation to succeed comes from was the root of the study, as this would help determine the structures of life-course movement through a grade-oriented schooling throughout high school and now in college. Data derived from the interviews revealed several different trajectories of such academic development, which was a result of such a wide range of participants, in terms of their own backgrounds and cultural and family histories.