In July 2006, eight members of the Marylin Avenue Elementary School leadership team from Livermore, Calif., arrived at the annual Education for the Future Summer Data Institute in Chico, Calif., eager to learn how to employ data-driven decision making to change their school. Data-driven decision making is the process of using data to inform decisions to improve teaching and learning. Schools typically engage in two kinds of data-driven decision making — at the school level and at the classroom level. The first leads to the second. At the school level, staff members look at all the data to: Understand where the school is; Understand how they got to where they are; Know if the school is meeting its goals and achieving its vision; Understand the