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Data has been promoted as the great game changer in education.  Simply stated, once we have good data, we can figure out what the problems are and how to fix them to improve student success. The common wisdom states that to increase data use, you have to build better data displays, develop a data committee to engage with data, or even deliver data to every staff member’s desktop.  While these efforts are laudable, they are destined for failure. Why?  Because the current theory and practice about increasing data to inform and improve decision making ignores the human element – the receiver of the data who is supposed to comprehend, interpret, form a judgment and eventually add the information to their decision making.  It also ignores the culture of the organization where the introduction of data as a tool for decision making may be unwelcome.