A Study of Data Driven Decision Making for School Administrators

Abstract

Data Driven Decision Making (DDDM) is a tool of management. It has been used in business and industry since 2^nd half of the 20^th century. A report titled “A Nation at Risk” was published in USA to know about the malaise of education in 1970s. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was introduce data driven decision making, accountability, collaboration and autonomy in schools to improve school education.

This study of “Data Driven Decision Making for School Administrators” was carried out to know about the perceptions and practices of data driven decision making of the public sector secondary school administrators of district Gujrat. The researchers also endeavoured to know about the role of school administrators in problem solving, decision making, collaboration, accountability and autonomy which contribute to the overall improvement of a school.   To know about it, a conceptual framework was developed and literature was reviewed. There were 271 schools in public sector at secondary level (boys and girls) in district Gujrat. The schools were randomly chosen and questionnaires were distributed and collected back .The data so collected was analyzed on SPSS-16 with the help of Likert type scale. The results shows that the public sector school administrators were aware about and used data to ascertain problem, make SMART objectives, make options, select the best one and take decision to achieve their objectives.  The results illustrated that public sector school administrators were unable to provide technology, make databases, use spread sheets to analyze and draw conclusions on scientific basis. They helped to change the attitude of faculty toward data use in schools but unable to change their beliefs as it is a long process. The results of the study reveal that the public sector secondary school administrators use data to make policy and strategy of the school but incoherently as the administrators are unable to change attitude and beliefs of the faculty toward use of data as a tool of management. The results of qualitative analysis of interviews show that their concept of improvement is very limited.