Lisa Abrams

1. Introduction Data use in education has been defined as “drawing on and interacting with information in the course of decision making” [1] (p. 99). On its face, the purpose of data use seems relatively simple. For school leaders, the basic idea is that they should have access to various types of data that they can analyze to help determine the best path forward for their schools.

I walked into the city last week and found a book in Oxfam called “Another Country” by James Baldwin. It was sitting on a shelf with the cover looking right at me on a display. It had the most beautiful cover I’ve ever seen on a book. It was a painting of a Black man in a grey city, with the buildings all at angles surrounding him and the city. It looked like a geometric puzzle from which you needed to work your way out. I looked at him on the cover and felt that it was me.