Earlier this week, I attended our Admin Council meeting, a once a month meeting with our senior administrative team. Admin Council is a great group of people that truly work together to support students and the learning agenda. I am fortunate to have an opportunity to work as a member of this team.

Each of our meetings begins with a round table opportunity for each member to comment on the reflection topic identified for the meeting. This week, our topic was data use in education. It was really quite fascinating to hear the variety of comments from the team members about data use in their particular roles.

A sampling of data uses identified (one or two per person) at the meeting include:

• capital planning
• financial reporting
• special education student tracking and analysis
• student learning
• school success planning
• trends in legal data
• pandemic planning
• demographics related to strategic advertising
• EQAO
• OnSIS
• backup verification
• project planning and sustainability
• staffing process
• enrollment projections
• workflow tracking and analysis
• student assessment
• transportation analysis
• bus route planning

What struck me was the evidence of change. I wondered what the answers to that question would have been 5 or 10 years ago. There is no doubt in my mind, we are solidly in a data driven world in education with data analysis well established as a key element of the planning and decision making process.

That is progress!

~ Mark