Collaborative learning teams (CLTs) produce positive outcomes for students by capitalizing on the knowledge and skills of individual team members.  Data Talks: The Counselors’ Guide to Increasing Graduation Rates adapts the CLT process made famous by Richard DuFour so that it can be used by school counselors to improve graduation rates.   
 
The book is divided into three main parts. The first four chapters introduce counselors to collaborative learning teams: purpose, critical questions, data sources, and operating guidelines.  The remaining chapters provide a “how to” guide for creating and conducting the meetings that make up the plan-do-check-act cycle of the CLT process.  Finally, the appendices provide step-by-step directions that counseling CLTs can use to organize the data sets referenced throughout the book.
 
With detailed explanations and real-world examples, Data Talks equips counselors with the guidance and tools to answer the four critical CLT questions related to on-time graduation.
 
1.      What do we want students to achieve?
2.      How do we know when they’ve achieved it?
3.      What do we do when they follow their graduation plan?
4.      What do we do when they don’t follow their graduation plan?