Nik Barkauskas

Nik Barkauskas - Data Wise Certified Coach

Nik Barkauskas’s life and career to this point have allowed him to serve many roles at all levels of education. He was a part of the maintenance staff at a K-12 school, worked in K-12 behavioral health and alternative education, and has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels of post-secondary education. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from Temple University, and in 2017 he earned his Ph.D. in Education Theory and Policy from Penn State with a qualitative dissertation on how non-profit foundations supported the development and implementation of the Common Core State Standards. He is currently the Assistant Director of School Improvement Performance Management for Pennsylvania’s Continuous Support and Improvement (CSI) system via Berks County Intermediate Unit. He works with schools and districts to develop school improvement plans and monitor progress on those plans throughout the year.

Throughout his career, Nik has been fascinated by how educators make decisions in the classroom. It’s clear that everyone needs data to make informed decisions, but it isn’t always clear how to turn the data into a high leverage change for a school. Data Wise is an excellent way for teachers and leaders to focus on improving their practice and measuring the impact of their work. I’m excited to be a Coach Candidate this year and learn more about getting the best out of school data and improving instruction. The added benefit of increased data literacy for schools means that leaders and teachers are much more likely to use data to highlight equity issues in their buildings and work to address those issues directly. Given the nuances of school data and his background in Qualitative methods, Nik is an advocate for leveraging mixed data sets for school decisions—including the use of surveys, interviews, observations, and other forms of data— to tell the whole data story of the work that goes on in schools.