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As reform in education continues to grow at unprecedented rates, so do the theories and models for success. While the goal of improving education has essentially remained the same for decades, steps taken to reach that goal have varied widely. The evolution of trends; what is new, popular, or attractively packaged, have mired education nationwide in a lack of unity. While the policy of best practice has risen from this discord, schools and districts nationwide are still in need of a vehicle to attain their goals. Data driven decision making can resolve these issues for educators. It is, in effect, using a trend to debunk all trends. The notion that only in very recent years has data driven decision making become an integral part of educational administration is alarming at best. When compared to the private sector, one does not need to perform much research to examine the consequences of trends. As stewards of the public's education, as well as their tax dollars, more than enough motivation exists to make the best possible decisions concerning both.

Perhaps the most frequent image of data that comes to educators' minds when the concept of data driven decision making is discussed is standardized test scores. While federally mandated state assessments such as Illinois' ISAT provide data, and they can certainly alter the allocation of educational resources, score reporting and interpretation lack woefully in terms of expedience and usefulness.
Due to this perception alone, several corporations and non-profit organizations have developed assessment options much more suited to school districts' data needs. A drawback to this scenario is that in the attempt to market assessment products, many of these organizations have over engineered their tests in an effort to meet the needs of all potential clients. Leaving the financial question aside, school districts considering the adoption of such an assessment tool need only consider the following criteria: content quality, interface ease, and data mining capability.
Sales material for assessment tools are more likely to identify the quantity of questions in their product's pool rather than the methods and materials (such as individual states' standards) used to generate the pool itself. If a potential client was able to identify a standards-based assessment solution that met its expectations, the argument of quality versus quantity could then take precedence. It can be argued that useful, standards-based data collected

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