California Professional Standards for Education Leaders · 5B–2
Review multiple measures of data and research on effective teaching and learning, leadership, management practices, equity and other pertinent areas to inform decision-making.
Multiple measures improve judgment when they represent different parts of the question—not when several similar numbers create the appearance of certainty.
What this looks like in practice
{"Begin with the decision and build an evidence set around it"=>"outcomes, opportunities to learn, implementation, student work, experience, and relevant research. Check definitions, time periods, missingness, comparability, and subgroup privacy before interpretation."}
Evidence does not make the decision by itself. Leaders must state the values, constraints, and uncertainties that connect findings to action, then monitor both the intended result and possible unintended effects.
Developing the practice
Define the question
Write the decision to be informed and identify what evidence would support, challenge, or complicate each plausible explanation.
Triangulate deliberately
Combine measures with different strengths, including implementation and experience data, and investigate disagreement between them.
Make uncertainty visible
Record limitations, assumptions, confidence, safeguards, and what new evidence will trigger reconsideration.
Useful connections
Assessment solutions
SDLA’s assessment collection can widen the conversation about measures, accommodations, interpretation, and reporting.
Educational Data Analyst
This role profile illustrates the expertise districts may need to make recurring analysis reliable and usable.
Questions for reflection and mentoring
- Do our measures illuminate different dimensions or repeat the same limitation?
- What would we conclude if the most familiar metric were unavailable?
- Which uncertainty should appear in the decision record?