Leaders need to guide their institutions through a maturity scale from operating with mostly manual data to being experts within the tech reality. Another vital aspect is data literacy for teachers to empower them to execute true personalized learning.

First, and this is the question all data analysts ask first – what data? Typically, schools are collecting these types of data sets, and much more, giving schools a more data rich environment than any other industry. There are two basic levels of data, analog and digital-derived.

We provided basic sets of these levels of data and information to assist on making the move from manual to digital school leadership.

There is a scale of progression to any data analytics, but a focus for the times is the student-centered information leading to the ability to prescribe specific learning. This is the personalization nirvana that so many schools are aiming for. But getting there is another matter.

Learn about this scale, view some terminology that makes analytics easier to understand, and read about how some educators are dealing with analytics.

Looking at a piece or set of digital data is meaningless if there is no understanding of how it is displayed. Before getting into how digital displays are generally created to convey data, first there is a much-needed definition of data literacy itself.

Education Data Literacy is the ability to know what an ideal situation would be like and have a familiarity with it.

This section of the Special Report provides specific positive and negative points to consider when dealing with data.

Graphs and charts provide visual access to huge amounts of data in easily digestible visuals. They allow people to understand the significance of data by placing it in visual context. Patterns, trends and correlations that might otherwise go undetected in text or numerical data are seen more clearly or from a new viewpoint. View definitions and examples to help clarify the use of graphs and charts in the education setting.