This chapter presents a more useful model for looking at student data that comes with greater accuracy and significantly more utility than the traditional lenses used by educators and researchers. This model, called the Academic Support Index (ASI), will help educators better understand students and their performance; it is able to precisely identify students who will benefit from intervention and support, and, most importantly, the model can help schools make efficient use of their limited resources to improve student outcomes and thereby directly impact the achievement gap. In addition to helping analyze and better understand student data, the ASI can be used to predict student performance, thereby supporting early intervention. The ASI has helped the district to move away from anecdotal and emotion-influenced decision making and allows it to answer many of the questions that surfaced during the era of school redesign with a heightened level of clarity and precision. Using the ASI, the district has made measurable progress toward closing the achievement gap without contributing to harmful narratives that link academic performance to single characteristics such as students' racial/ethnic group.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)