The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) increased awareness of educational accountability and the need for greater focus on educational outcomes. Education stakeholders—from school boards to parents, teachers, superintendents, and even state legislators—are now using data as an important lever in education reform. This is a necessary condition for implementing performance management as a framework for improving school and student performance. For the purposes of this discussion, the term performance management has been borrowed from the field of business to describe an approach to building the capacity of educators at all levels to use data to prioritize activities that advance core goals, measure progress toward meeting these goals, and make informed decisions about the best ways to improve student achievement. Looking systemically at how all the components of the education system work together to support student learning is the primary goal of this new management approach.
While much of the strategic planning for performance management happens at the district level, implementation happens at each school site in a school district. School principals are on the front line, carrying out new programs, interventions, and curriculum and instruction. As managers of teacher and student performance, principals need information about how every part of the school is operating. Education indicators provide leaders with new understanding of capacity and productivity to meet students’ educational needs and can inform teachers and other educators of progress on improvements to the education system. Annual trends and outcomes, as well as day-to-day information on attendance, course performance, behavior, etc., are needed to monitor and fine-tune system performance. A primary goal of performance management is to aid schools and staff as they shift from an attitude of compliance to a new commitment to continuous improvement.
What follows are five practical and evidence-based principles that can be used to develop and implement effective performance management strategies in the middle grades, along with a description of the rationale behind each principle, and a few specific practices and examples that schools can follow to ensure success. These principles provide direction on using data to improve instruction and learning, monitoring progress toward goals, and evaluating the effectiveness of decisions.