Data-Driven Inquiry

Data-driven inquiry helps teachers and school leaders invest energy where it has the greatest impact. By keeping everyone’s attention on student performance data, inquiry fosters a culture of public practice and shared responsibility for student success.

How it works

Inquiry is a systematic way of responding to gaps in student learning. School teams participate in many inquiry cycles over the course of a school year. In each cycle, teams plan and implement small changes in practice that they hypothesize will lead to big gains in learning.

School teams receive support to:

• analyze a variety of student data to uncover patterns in classroom and school practices that allow performance gaps to persist.

• identify a group of target students, set specific goals for improvement, implement small changes in practice, and refine the approach until goals are met.

• build on successful work with target students so that evidence rather than instinct informs decisions about school policies, use of resources, curriculum, and other practices that affect all students.

• identify their own professional learning needs and seek support where needed.

• develop teachers’ and administrators’ capacity to improve outcomes for struggling students and lead school-wide change.

Read more about the BPE facilitation and data services that support inquiry teams.

Our partner schools

Adams ES
Blackstone ES
Brook Farm Academy
Dever-McCormack K-8
Haley ES
Gardner K-8
Marshall ES
McKay K-8
Mildred Ave MS
Madison Park HS
New Mission HS
Community Academy of Science and Health

Why it matters
 

Despite years of reform, too many young people continue to drop out of Boston’s schools. Many of those who do graduate are not prepared for the demands of college and the workforce. Boston’s inquiry approach empowers school teams to tackle this problem by building on what they know and acting on timely student learning data to get more students on track for success.

Boston’s inquiry initiative is a partnership of the Boston Plan for Excellence, Boston Public Schools, and Boston Teacher Residency and is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Walmart Foundation, and the W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation. Our approach is adapted from the work of New Visions for New Schools and CUNY's Baruch College in New York City.