You cannot navigate a winding road by staring into the rearview mirror. You will know about where you have been, but you will remain blind to the curve approaching. Yet, American education too often insists on steering based on tire tracks left months ago. 

Schools are increasingly interested in data—state and local test scores, climate surveys, graduation rates. Yet for a teacher interested in engaging a struggling student (or anyone interested in improving policy, programs, or practice), this can feel less like a resource and more like an autopsy.

To ‘get better at getting better,’ we must admit that annual results arrive too late to inform course corrections. To negotiate the road ahead, we must stop measuring solely to label outcomes and start measuring to guide instruction. This requires Practical Measurement for Improvement—the windshield educators need for daily, disciplined inquiry.

Three Faces of Measurement

We must stop conflating three distinct purposes for measurement, each demanding a different design:

1. Accountability (The Scoreboard): Asks ‘Did we meet our goals? What levels of performance have we achieved and is that acceptable?’ It is high-stakes, infrequent, and designed for judgment.
2. Research (The Laboratory): Asks ‘Is this theory true? What are the impacts of policy approaches like these?’ It prioritizes generalizability and precision, often at the expense of usefulness and usability.
3. Improvement (The Steering Wheel): It asks, “What change works here—and why?” It prioritizes learning, both that of students and of those who seek the growth and development of students.

The point is that purpose drives design. To improve instruction next week, we need leading indicators—’sensing mechanisms’ embedded directly in the rhythm of the classroom.

The “Tuesday Test” for Practical Measurement

As Paul LeMahieu and Paul Cobb (2025) argue, if teachers collect data on Monday, the question is: ‘What will they do with it on Tuesday?

If the data is too highly aggregated, too abstract, or too delayed to prompt a specific adjustment to practice the very next day, it isn’t a measure for improvement. It is paperwork.

To pass, measures must be theory-aligned, meaningful, actionable, low-burden, and timely enough for Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) learning cycles.

But a single measure is rarely enough. Improvement science teaches us to view schools as systems. If we push on one lever (e.g., math fluency), what happens to another (e.g., student motivation)? 

Systems need a ‘Family of Measures’: outcomes (aim), drivers (key markers), process (workflow), and balancing (unintended consequences—good and bad).

Rigor Embedded in Relevance

Practical doesn’t mean ‘quick and dirty.’ Building usable, predictive measures requires more rigor, not less, but the definition must expand.

Traditional psychometrics focuses on validity-for-use: Does the instrument measure what it claims? Measurement is sociotechnical. Beyond validity-for-use (is the instrument accurate?), we need validity-in-use—ensuring routines and cultural and technical supports for safe and constructive inquiry rather than mere compliance.

If a measure is technically perfect but leads educators to blame students rather than examine their own practice, it has failed.

Centering Variation

Perhaps the most urgent argument for practical measurement is its potential to advance equity. Traditional accountability reports averages for subgroups. But efficacy doesn’t happen at the average; it happens in the variation. Practical measurement for improvement demands that we interrogate the data to explore: “What works, for whom, under what conditions?” By engaging in frequent, low-stakes measurement, teams can see exactly how students are responding to a new strategy (or not).

They can pivot this week, rather than waiting for an end-of-year failure.

This shifts from deficit framing (‘What is wrong with these students?’) to systems thinking (‘How is our system failing them?’), empowering educators to act.

From Implementers to Co-Inquirers

Practical measurement shifts power dynamics, inviting teachers to be co-inquirers rather than just ‘implementers’ of external mandates.

When we include practitioners in the design of the measures—asking them what constitutes meaningful evidence of learning—we build agency. This alignment frames ‘practical measurement’ as the operational engine for the Assessment in the Service of Learning (AISL) movement. It transforms assessment from an external audit into an internal capacity for improvement, restoring agency to learners and front-line educators.

Build the Steering Wheel

Leaders have a choice: drive by the rearview mirror of last year’s trends, or look ahead by investing in the capacities (human, technical, and structural) to measure what matters, when it matters.

Measurement can fuel disciplined inquiry—but only if it is designed for learning. It is time to treat measurement as a catalyst for improvement, not just an audit of compliance. The real question isn’t ‘Did we implement with fidelity?’ It is ‘Did we improve, with integrity, in this context?’ When we install this forward looking view, we stop tracing the map of last year’s roads and start accelerating toward efficacy, one Tuesday at a time.