DATA IN ACTION

Why Data in Action?

In GO West Contra Costa’s first year, we hosted a Data Equity Walk informed by The Education Trust-West’s Black Minds Matter report. As parents, educators, and community partners interacted with the data, the need to find progammatic solutions to improve outcomes for students-particularly vulnerable populations-gained urgency. We invited the community to join a research team, and tasked participants with proposing potential interventions. After some months, a foundational need became clear: data – and the tools, mindsets, and skills to use it. As a result Data in Action was launched, with the goal of ensuring that leaders in West Contra Costa - from the classroom to the boardroom to the community - use data and evidence to inform strategy, budgets, and decisions.

Our Wins

Over the course of 2017, our family leaders and staff advocated for the school board to adopt stronger data practices. Our family leaders presented at a school board meeting, met with Superintendent Duffy to garner his support, and worked directly with members of the school board to draft a resolution.

In October of 2017, the efforts of our family leaders, staff, coalition partners, and community allies were rewarded when the school board unanimously voted to adopt A Resolution to Affirm Our Commitment to Strategic Use of Data from Preschool through 12th Grade.

Monitoring Progress

West Contra Costa Unified School District’s commitment to improve data reporting and use is not the end of the journey To monitor progress and hold our leaders publicily accountable, we created the Strategic US of Data Rubric Adapted from the Harvard Strategic Data Project, we developed this data rubric to evaluate distrit staff presentations to the school board in hopes of seeing an increase in the strategic use of data to inform decision making. Using this tool we have scored several presentations to the board and the community. We then used the data rubric to inform our own presentation to district leader, where we called for a revision of Superintendent Duffy’s Roadmap 2022.