In this paper, a study of how local policy goals are adapted and enacted by school administrators in Norway as they work with student performance data with school leaders is presented. The analytical scope of the study is placed on organizational routines (Feldman 2000) in combination with the concepts of primary and secondary goals in interpersonal influence attempts (Dillard & Segrin 1989, Feng 2004). Together, these enable a closer investigation into how goals are defined in key local policy documents, how these are given meaning to by school administrators and how they are adapted and enacted in their work with data on student performance with school leaders. Data use practices means what happens when individuals use test scores, grades, and other forms of assessment in their work (Coburn & Turner, 2011; Spillane, 2012). A central component in this line of thinking is the role of local authority as driver and motivator for the use of data in schools (Skedsmo 2009). However, while “best practices” of organization of data use in districts/municipalities have been researched (e.g. Kerr et al., 2006, Parke, 2012), fewer studies address data use across administrative levels and attend to micro-practices of data use. By adopting a governance perspective, we focus on administrative processes to explore how interaction between key actors and levels are adapted and enacted (Stoker, 1998; Little, 2012). The following research questions have been defined to guide the study: What goal structures and organizational routines around data use can be identified across administrative levels and actors? How do school administrators adapt and enact key policy goals in their work? The study draws on data material from document analysis, interviews with school administrators and observations from meetings where representatives from local authority and the schools participate. In the study, three schools in three municipalities, differing in terms of geographic location, size and quality assessment system have been investigated over three years. The findings of the study show how primary goals defined in key documents to a varying degree are being transformed and adapted in administrators primary and secondary goals – sometimes changing the focus of primary goals into another direction, other times enhancing and extending the primary goals defined in key policy documents. Three styles of administrative governing through data have been identified and presented in this study.

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