We need teachers today. When I was a senior in high school, I thought the coolest job would be to serve as a member of Congress.  I was lucky to…

More than a feeling It’s the end of the year, when we reflect on the past year and look forward to new beginnings. I haven’t done any rigorous data collection…

Word Clouds and Key Quotations: Making Qualitative Data Work for You This week I’ve got a co-author to help me continue my qualitative data series! Sarah Dunifon is Founder and Principal Evaluator…

Numbers Can’t Tell the Whole Story You should know by now that I’m a bit of a data nerd.  I love spreadsheets. I love organizing data and using it to…

Five years! Five years ago this week, I took the leap.  I was a Community School Coordinator (CSC) in Baltimore and a doctoral student, and it was time for a…

We can’t let them fall through the cracks. I started writing a completely different blog post for this week, but when I read the news this morning, I knew I…

Survey Fails … and How to Recover from Them Sometimes you launch a survey, and you’re blown away by the number of responses you get.  And sometimes, you’re not.  I…

Tips and Tricks for Great Survey Design … and a Survey for You We have all taken TONS of surveys in our lifetime.  We get surveys when we make an…

Start the School Year By Hearing from Stakeholders Growing up in New Jersey, the day after Labor Day always marked the start of a new school year … and the…

The “How” of Data Tracking: Conditional Formatting I’ve written a lot lately (here and here) about WHY tracking your school or organization’s data is so critical right now. As schools begin to…