Dustin Marshall has served as a Dallas Independent School District trustee since 2016. Marshall survived four contested elections in that short tenure (a special election, a regular election, and runoffs in both races). His support for data and research-based education reforms galvanized parents to vote in each race. The Dallas businessman, who was a member of the 2016 Presidential Leadership Scholars class, is known for using data to drive decisions and to best determine the strategies that will help Dallas students succeed.

In this interview, Marshall explains the pressures that exist in a district to not upend the status quo. Teachers unions or associations particularly stand in the way of change, in part through blocking efforts to remove underperforming teachers. He also details how some school trustees obstruct change, often by voting against a measure that actually would help students in their districts.

"I come from a management consulting background at Bain. Every decision is supposed to include data, and data is not thought of as a bad word. A partner at Bain had a plaque above his desk that read, 'In God I trust. Everyone else must bring data.'

"It was shocking to me, and fairly appalling, that there are actually arguments made in education that data is bad, that you need not talk about data because data’s misleading."

Read the full interview with Dustin Marshall about data in education at The 74.