The Secret Lives of Data Managers
As education has become increasingly datafied, data managers – a position many might have imagined would only ever exist in large IT firms – have become a more frequent feature of education job boards. A quick scroll through the careers sections of many school and network sites will reveal just how in demand data managers now are. This makes sense: as schools are opting to be more data-driven, it’s all the more essential that there is a point person capable of managing the endless ocean of student information.
Yet as desirable as data managers might be, there isn’t a lot of clarity or consistency around what data managers do. Descriptions of the role often vary from school to school. In one iteration, you could be sending out attendance emails and maintaining records of state test data. In another, you might be a software expert, capable of debugging data management technology independently.
As a former data manager, I wanted to share a bit about the seemingly secret lives that many of us in this position often lead. This article and the following are geared towards anyone who is a data manager or in a related position and finds themselves navigating murky waters. Below, I’ll talk about the essential functions of a data manager and share some reflections on my own experience.
What is a data manager?
The answer is, for better or for worse, “it depends” — and not just on the types of tasks you’re expected to do. Based on where you’re situated within the educational ecosystem, it will vary dramatically. For example, some networks have taken the approach of establishing large data management teams, with some team members working out of particular schools. Some schools have stand alone data managers, which is how I started out. In others, data managers aren’t an independent position but one responsibility among others. Over time, I’ve found that the range of data manager positions reflects the various ways in which schools are trying to become data-driven.
Yet there remains a couple of core functions and privileges that data managers share. Whether in a school that has been slow on the technological uptake or in a well-established network with proprietary data management systems, data managers across the educational sector are ultimately responsible for maintaining high-quality data systems and communicating about data in ways that facilitate decision making for all members of the community. This includes parents, students and board members, along with administrators and teachers.
Being a data manager also means that you have access to valuable student information and (ideally) the time to sit down and reflect on it with greater depth than many of your colleagues. With this power comes great responsibility. Many data managers find themselves at the intersection of policy and strategic planning — even if this wasn’t included in their initial job description. By virtue of their cross-departmental position, they can see things that other educators – even high-level administrators – can’t.
What data managers can do with the wealth of insights they often have on school health, student attendance and the like is (surprise surprise) not always clear. For some, being a data manager means you’re the person who pulls together tables for others to analyze; for others, it can involve preparing high-stakes reports for the board. In an ideal scenario, there’s alignment between the enormous insight that a data manager often has and the impact that they’re able to have on the health of their school or network.
Finally, data managers are advocates for the positive power of data. Many ed data managers will find themselves in schools where there are more than a handful of data skeptics. I think this is a natural consequence of the fact that cultural transitions, like becoming more data-driven, tend to take a long time and stir up a lot of resistance in the process. But the prevalence of data managers working in education today is an indication that change is well underway. So don’t give up believing that what you do is important, even if some days it feels like being data-driven is the last thing any of your colleagues are thinking about!
What has being a data manager meant for me?
I was lucky enough to start out as a data manager in a school that gave me leeway in how I carried out my responsibilities. Much of this had to do with the fact that my role was very new. As a result, when I started the job, there wasn’t a lot of information on what data I needed to look at, where it was located and who it was for. I was getting inundated with all kinds of data – state test results, assessment scores, IEP statuses, attendance – without a lot of guidance on how I should be interacting with it.
The learning curve was initially quite steep. I had to figure out how to work with a range of data in a setting where, unlike in college or grad school, there wasn’t a formula for me to apply. Just lots and lots of data, educators eager to support their students, and kids and families wanting to learn and succeed.
But I soon discovered that the lack of direction I initially found bewildering was a big part of the beauty of the job. I started at the most basic level, which was pinning down where all the data was. Once I knew where I could find different types of information, I moved onto identifying my school’s priorities. What are the goals for this year? I asked myself and my colleagues. And what’s the long term mission and vision? Timing of data outputs also played a big role in shaping the ebb and flow of my job. When I finally started getting my sea legs, I pulled together an assessment calendar. This helped me anticipate when data would come in, which then freed me up to figure out when the best time to analyze a given set of information might be.
After I got a handle on my school’s priorities and the general timing of data, I began to think about how to present data in ways that would be accessible and meaningful for different audiences. In my case, this included everyone from instructional coaches to board members. The school I worked at was working really hard to be data-driven, which meant that a whole lot of people were looking at what I was putting together. This might have been the most intimidating part of my job. I had to make the data tell an accurate story about where my school was in ways that everyone could understand.
It goes without saying that this was all much easier said than done. But it’s the storytelling and the subsequent impact that it can have that made being a data manager so rewarding. No matter how inconsistently defined they might be, our jobs matter because they empower others to make sound, evidence-based decisions that aim to benefit the communities we serve. And because our jobs are so important, I'll share some of my basic tips for do's and don’ts as a data manager in our first article of 2023! Stay tuned.