Data isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet—it’s a tool to help educators ask better questions, spot meaningful patterns, and make smarter decisions. Dr. Jim Knight shares how thinking like a data scientist can empower schools to uncover insights and create lasting change. Here’s how you can apply his advice with three actionable tips.

Taking charge of a classroom for the first time is no small task. So how to ensure new teacher induction programs are working across the district? Good data practices that keep administrators informed, coaches aligned, and educators clear on their next steps.

Any work that deals with attitudinal change like unconscious bias must be embedded so it’s front-of-mind and continuously active. This means applying the same best practices found in any other PD intervention. Explore how to evaluate anti-racist teacher PD, and ensure that the training is translating into classroom practice.

Continuous improvement — the art of using data to decide goals, identify the paths to get there, evaluate the resulting change, and make adjustments to the next cycle — is the key to improving instructional practice. But why? And, more importantly, how?

Join KickUp as we examine six of the most common roadblocks to thriving data cultures. With practical tips, guiding questions, and real-life examples of districts excelling through data, you can push your professional learning program to new levels of effectiveness.

A good foundation is critical to your professional learning plan's success — but all the value alignment, calendar coordination and guiding philosophy in the world won’t guarantee a good outcome. Without clear intention for what the final product will actually do, the people it's serving won’t be able to make sense of the “why do we have this?,” let alone the “how do we use this?” Today: simplifying data presentations for accessibility, understanding and buy-in.

A good foundation is critical to your professional learning plan's success — but all the value alignment, calendar coordination and guiding philosophy in the world won’t guarantee a good outcome. Without clear intention for what the final product will actually do, the people it's serving won’t be able to make sense of the “why do we have this?,” let alone the “how do we use this?” Today: simplifying data presentations for accessibility, understanding and buy-in.

If you're trying to build a habit among a group of people — like consistently and thoroughly responding to feedback surveys, for example — the trick is to simplify and streamline wherever possible, for both the audience and yourself. Today in our Actionable Data series: running large-scale data projects while respecting your teachers' time — and your own.

Short, intermediate and long-term change can look very different in both pace and types of indicator — not to mention the the complex task of balancing the existing demands of the school year with your program's data needs. Let’s explore how to build robust yet flexible calendars for data accountability:

How do you balance maintaining compliance, hitting district goals, and doing the real work of inspiring your teacher-leaders to achieve? It’s not by defaulting to the safety of easily-measurable but shallow metrics — it’s by sharpening the focus of the qualitative changes.

When we talk about impact in K-12 education, the conversation inevitably turns to outcome data (like student test scores). And it's true that the ultimate accountability is to our students. But what about the work that comes between? What if there were a hundred tiny invisible factors feeding into those outcomes? What if there were a way to identify, measure, and align them from the start?

How one Ohio district is closing the achievement gap with a thriving professional learning culture, holistic teacher supports, and a data strategy for real-time intervention.

When Lorenzo Rizzo returned to Belton School District--the school district he’d once attended as a student--to become their new Assistant Superintendent of School Improvement, he wanted to build a culture in which professional learning was explicitly aligned to strategic priorities. To do so, he needed to capture data that would help his team assess progress. The main challenge? Shifting the culture to embrace this data required a thoughtful approach designed to build trust.

While many administrators know they want to promote a data-informed culture, it’s hard to know how to put this into practice beyond scheduled data meetings. That's why we’ve compiled a number of tips and tricks for incorporating professional development data into planning, decision-making, and implementation.

How do we know whether professional learning is actually working? Which supports are making an impact on teachers and students, and which might we want to walk away from? In this podcast with Daniel Bauer, KickUp CEO Jeremy Rogoff explores the common challenges that school leaders face while making critical decisions about how to most effectively allocate their professional learning resources.

KickUp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Rogoff spent time with Dr. Rod Berger ASCD annual conference, where the two discussed how KickUp helps school districts collect ongoing data from teachers as a way to make informed decisions about professional learning.