Most Challenge schools must also report progress to the state or district using standardized tests designed to rankorder large groups of students as a way of evaluating their education. When teachers and schools are punished or rewarded on the basis of such tests, the stakes rise for doing well on them. Such high-stakes accountability can complicate change when it diverts attention away from other, often more meaningful, measures. All kinds of information about what goes on in schools count as data , depending on what questions people are asking. Some data are presented as numbers-like promotion and retention rates, student mobility, teacher transfers, the number of books students read.
Some data come in the form of actual student work, providing a richer picture than test scores can.
Stories can also constitute data-providing evidence of community involvement, for example, or documenting how teachers work together. As well as charting its direct benefits to students, they are looking at how the Challenge has affected schools, groups of schools, larger educational systems like districts or states, and political and community support. .