Publications and Articles

Creating a Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges

Brad C. Phillips and Jordan E. Horowitz

Published by Harvard Education Press (2017), this book offers a research-based model approach for turning data into information that is useful, usable, and actionable. The authors draw from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics to demonstrate how colleges can make better use of data resulting in improvements in student success.

Creating Data Faculty Can Use in Inside Higher Ed, a Q&A

Ashley A. Smith

Inside Higher Ed features an Ashley A. Smith interview with IEBC President/CEO Brad Phillips and Vice President Jordan Horowitz about their new book, Creating a Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges: A New Model for Educators published by Harvard Education Press. In the article, Smith discusses with Phillips and Horowitz the amount and quality of the data available to community colleges. Read the entire Q&A session in Creating Data Faculty Can Use.

Student Success and Data Use

This publication describes IEBC workshops that include Demystifying Data, Telling Your Story with Data, and How to Integrate Data and Its Uses into Meetings that Command Attention. The 11 workshops are based on the data use model in Creating A Data-Informed Culture in Community Colleges.

Why it is Better to Lead Than Lag: Leading and Lagging Indicators for Education

Jordan E. Horowitz

Leading indicators are the key to making improvements in your big goals- lagging indicators. In this article, Jordan Horowitz describes the importance of understanding leading indicators and their key role in achieving desired outcomes.

Data Use Principles for Education Leaders

Jordan E. Horowitz

In this article, Jordan Horowitz pulls together five principles highlighting key lessons designed to help educational leaders increase their understanding of data to increase student success.

Driving Education Accountability: “I’m Sorry Officer, the Gas Gauge…”

Brad C. Phillips

How do we know what measures and data provide the right information to help administrators, faculty and staff make needed changes? In this article by Brad Phillips, he identifies how Odessa College approached making improvements in student outcomes by focusing on what matters most.

Moving the Needle on Community College Student Success

Brad C. Phillips and Jordan Horowitz

How do we know when too many metrics are hindering positive change? In this article by Brad Phillips and Jordan Horowitz, the authors emphasize the importance of focus, argue that the use of too many metrics is hindering positive change and offer an alternative approach.

Vision for Success

Vision for Success is an important and candid report from the California Community Colleges Board of Governors.

California does not have to start from scratch in building new education data system

Brad C. Phillips

In this commentary in EdSource, IEBC President Brad Phillips writes that the system can build on what we’ve already learned and must be both useful and easy to use.

The Problems and Promise of Bringing Educational Interventions to Scale

Brad C. Phillips

Do barriers to change lie within our own silos?  In this article, Brad Phillips identifies four barriers that bold action can address.

Big Data Alone Won’t Help Students

Brad C. Phillips and Jordan E. Horowitz

Read the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This article points out that the information that comes out of big-data systems must be usable, useful, and actionable by educators who know how to make sense of it.  This article was first published in the Chronicle of Higher Education Special Report on the Digital Campus, April 2017, highlighting the work top innovators are undertaking and where it is leading.

Improving Response Time in Education

Brad C. Phillips

When it comes to student performance data, are we measuring the right indicators? It may be a simple matter of timing, writes Brad Phillips.