Data-driven decision making has become increasingly important in the world of education. According to the American Association of Community Colleges, the ability to not only use data in decision making processes, but to understand best practices has become a competency that community college leaders must have or obtain in order to be considered a sufficient leader at this level of higher education.

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of data literacy among community college leaders. Further, the study defines best practices for leaders who use data driven decision making within their current position. Specifically, the purpose of this research project is to address the data literacy level of leaders within the selected community colleges and provide the previously mentioned deliverables:

• Descriptive statistics

• Overview analysis of participating institutions

• Suggestions and recommendations for participating institutions

The American Association of Community College’s Leadership Competencies as well as Transformational Leadership Theory were used to guide the study. For this study, leaders are defined as anyone who may be in a faculty program director position or higher, executive level leaders which may include the president, vice president(s), chief financial officer, Deans including assistant or associate level. Leaders may also be established in other institutions as those that have administrative type duties along with a faculty or professional staff role

Two hundred twenty community college leaders responded to the Data-Driven Decision Making Survey. The majority of the respondents showed a willingness to involve data in decision making and felt as if their institution was prepared to better use data in areas that they worked within. Most also felt as if they were prepared, personally, to better use data as a driver for better decision making at their institution.