The Last Mile Problem - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 13

strength, educational resources, and graduation rates. 14 Over time, Morse and
his team introduced new variables to the models that produced the rankings.
After the public understood the basics, U.S. News added complexity to refine
the measures.
Create a Data Experience for a Diverse Audience
To aid students and families in the college choice process, U.S. News created
My Fit Engine, an interactive tool that allows them to enter their preferences
and find a list of matching schools. Although rankings appeal to students and
families working through the college choice process, they have just as much
(if not more) appeal to higher education institutions. In polling these institu-
tions, U.S. News found that institutions are often concerned with historical
trends and patterns. Accordingly, U.S. News worked with Juice Analytics to
create Academic Insights, an online, interactive tool to analyze and explore
data over time.
The great innovation of the U.S. News list is that it organizes vast amounts of
information into a uniform format that is easily understood and then distrib-
utes that information via readily accessible print and online formats. U.S. News
created a system where information on hundreds of institutions could be
processed and reduced to a set of lists. Instead of sorting through countless
websites and glossy brochures, families now had a quick way to reduce the
amount of time invested in the college search process. In doing so , U.S. News
demonstrates the skills central to quadrant 2 of our framework—the skills to
create effective data presentations.
Organizational-Level Consumers: School District Woes
The meeting ended badly. For the last five years, the district had worked tire-
lessly to implement a new teacher evaluation system—and a corresponding
database and reporting system to support its use. The district even allocated
a large percentage of its $10 million grant from the federal government to
hire “data coaches” to work with principals and teachers to develop familiar-
ity with the data system and capitalize on its use. But the money ran out last
year. The data coaches had to go, many to positions outside the district. The
few that remained took central office jobs to work with the IT department on
a wide variety of tasks, but with no unified purpose.
Now, one year later, the School Board called a special meeting to investigate
the status and impact of this expensive endeavor. The central office team
gave a dire report—unable to visit schools and without enough money to