This article examines how educational indicators have been and may be used to serve educational policy ends, what the potential benefits and dangers are of various uses, and how guidelines for appropriate relationships between indicators and policy might be forged. The article draws particular attention to recent debates and difficulties in fashioning a constructive role for educational indicators—a role that illuminates educational issues without distorting the educational process or harming students and schools by misusing indicator data. It argues that efforts to try to use indicators as administrative controls or policy levers are misguided. Instead, if they are to support student learning and school improvement, indicator systems should be developed to illuminate educational activities and processes as the basis for reflective policy-making.
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