Inaugural Overview of States’ Actions To Leverage Data To Improve Student Success

Organization: Data Quality Campaign

Date: Jan 2010

Data are useful only when they are transformed into actionable information that people are able to access, understand and use. Thanks to federal, state and local investments of political will and resources, the education sector is on the cusp of becoming an information-based enterprise.

But reaching this goal depends on states taking actions that change the historically entrenched culture of using data for compliance reporting into one that values analysis of data and prioritizes constant communication to all stakeholders of the education system. Only when students, parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers have timely and ready access to academic and performance data will their decisions, practices and policies be driven by relevant information.

Since 2005, the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) has supported state development of longitudinal data systems that provide policymakers with information to create and adjust policies and practices to improve student achievement. The DQC’s annual survey of states’ progress on implementing the 10 Essential Elements of these systems shows that states have made impressive gains, and every state has committed to having a system with all 10 Essential Elements by 2011.

Although creating state longitudinal data systems and collecting vital information to answer key questions about performance are important steps, states also must have policies and practices in place to ensure that all education stakeholders are able to access, understand and use the information for continuous improvement.

The DQC 10 Essential Elements and 10 State Actions provide states a common roadmap to reach this goal. This year, for the first time, the DQC survey also asked questions about the 10 State Actions that are vital to using longitudinal data for continuous improvement. This inaugural overview reveals that states are just beginning to take the necessary steps:

  • The majority of states (43) have implemented three or fewer of the DQC State Actions.
  • Only ten states are sharing individual progress reports with educators, and fewer than half of states provide reports to stakeholders using aggregate-level statistics.

The same political will, energy and resources that coalesced to build robust longitudinal data systems over the past three years must now be harnessed to assist states in putting into place practices and policies that will ensure these rich data are used to inform decisionmaking across the P–20/workforce spectrum.

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