Data Quality Campaign

Report Cards Aren’t Just for Students

Rebecca Shah — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:03:25 +0000

If you remember your school-aged years (and if you’re now a parent) you know about report cards. Maybe you blamed your teacher for unacceptable grades. Maybe you were a straight-A student. The point is the same—report cards told you (student, parent, educator) valuable information about the student’s academic performance. If you were lucky, progress reports were distributed throughout the year to monitor the student’s progression and take action as necessary to keep the student on track before the final report card grades. If the world were perfect, the information would go beyond a simple letter grade and provide details about the student’s strengths and weaknesses to better support the student’s progress.

You probably never thought of report cards this way, but they are education data, and delivering this education data is important at many levels. The report card you knew as a student is about the individual, but states also produce report cards with information about every district and school in the state. Most states started this public reporting as a result of a requirement in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently authorized as the No Child Left Behind Act; see this blog by current DQC Director of National and Federal Policy Initiatives Kirstin Yochum for naming nomenclature). So most states are producing this information based on compliance.

DQC’s long-time partner Achieve is working with states to change this compliance mindset and encourage states to focus on reporting indicators tied to college and career readiness (CCR), including

achievement on assessments in middle and early in high school;
course completion and success along a CCR course of study; and
attainment for ninth-grade students based on grades and attendance in core courses.

Currently even if the above information is publicly reported, the data are often in disparate locations and not displayed in a way that enhances understanding and use. Achieve’s advocacy and support in states pushes and aids states to produce timely, accessible, contextual, and coordinated data reporting aligned with CCR goals and strategies.

This year DQC is working with Achieve and other partners to inform state policymakers about current and emerging best practices on public reporting for local stakeholders to make informed decisions, answering the following questions:

Why should states prioritize district and school report cards?
What questions do local stakeholders need answered through public reporting?
How should public reports be made available and displayed to facilitate understanding and use?
What states are demonstrating promising practices?

Just as students and parents use individual report cards to make decisions about students’ progress and next steps required for success, so should districts, schools, and education stakeholders be able to use district and school report cards to make decisions about school choice, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Tags:

Action Issues Filter:

College and Career Readiness

Is Latest Work?:

Off

Is Aimee's Desk?:

Off

Empowering Parents with Education Data

Lisa Sparrow — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:23:43 +0000

If you’re anything like me, you wouldn’t dream of making a decision without thoroughly researching all your options first.

Before I go to the movies, I check out Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB to help me decide which film to see. When purchasing a new appliance, I consult Consumer Reports for the most up-to-date ratings and recommendations. When choosing a hotel or vacation destination, I spend hours poring over traveler reviews on Trip Advisor.

Fortunately for me, in the hyper-connected world we live in, I can easily access a tremendous amount of information—both qualitative and quantitative—to inform my decisions large and small. The information these sites provide helps me navigate my options and make a choice that best meets my personal criteria.

More than ever before, families across the country have choices to make, choices about where to send their children to school and which programs, resources, and opportunities are best for them. These are really important choices—much more important than which movie to see or what blender to buy. To make these choices—and to make them well—parents need readily available, easily understandable information. They need education data. Publicly available, aggregated student data help parents understand the quality of their schools and make informed decisions about their children’s education choices.

Since 1998 DQC partner GreatSchools has been working to provide parents with robust, aggregate, school-level data to help parents find great schools and improve learning opportunities for their children. Since then it has become the leading national source of school performance information for parents, providing critical information about school performance, climate, and more to 44 million unique visitors and 50 percent of American families with children. Harnessing the power of big data, crowdsourcing, and mobile technology, GreatSchools engages and supports parents in their quest to find the right school for their child—the school that fits their family’s values, that best meets their child’s unique needs.

I recently had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco for the first GreatSchools Summit on choosing schools in the digital age. Throughout the day panelists and participants kept returning to the idea that robust, high-quality information empowers parents to navigate their manifold options and make smart school choices that match their values and meet their needs. In a nutshell, parents need data. While families may have different goals and interests when searching for schools (just as my idea of a perfect vacation may differ from yours) the fact remains: parents are more likely to find a great school that is a great fit for their child when they have education data they can easily access, understand, tailor to their needs, and act on.

Though the GreatSchools platform reaches 50 percent of American families with children (a huge number!), all families in every state need access to robust education data. States have a responsibility to ensure this access for parents and other education stakeholders—to work with districts, schools, and others to provide stakeholders with the information they need to answer critical questions about school enrollment, school climate, student performance, teacher quality, and more.

To aid states in this important work, DQC is working with GreatSchools and other partners to inform state policymakers about current and emerging best practices on public reporting for local stakeholders to make informed decisions, including issues like what indicators states should publicly report to meet the information needs of parents, educators, policymakers, taxpayers, and business owners; how public reports should be made available; and how data in public reports should be displayed to facilitate understanding and use. Stay tuned!

Tags:

Action Issues Filter:

Local Data Use

Is Latest Work?:

Off

Is Aimee's Desk?:

Off

Geek Chic

Kristin Yochum — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:02:39 +0000

I . . . am a geek. I will correct your grammar, I can throw down Star Trek TNG or Doctor Who knowledge with the best of them, and I think data are a pretty remarkable thing. And I think all of that is pretty cool.

As a self-confessed data geek, I was honored to be selected as the director of National and Federal Policy Initiatives with the Data Quality Campaign. My career to date has been shaping me for this day. As a government employee, you are often expected to do more with less, and that is how, after some self-taught Excel lessons, I began my journey into education data. While working on the District of Columbia’s Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, I volunteered to be responsible for the creation, maintenance, and analysis of the program’s intense data requirements. Within weeks, I was a convert—the data laid out the story of GEAR UP’s impact on student achievement, and I was ready to tell it to anyone who would listen.

My obsession with the clear-cut picture that data can tell you didn’t end there. I began to rely on data throughout my career. Not enough money on the postage machine? Why aren’t we tracking those data to tell us how much we need and when? Not enough money for public charter schools coming from the federal government? Why don’t we know how much has been granted and how it has been used? Let’s collect the data and paint that picture for Congress.

As I begin my new role I expect my geekiness to soar to new heights. I won’t just be using data to advocate on behalf of programs that will improve student achievement; I will be using data to advocate on using data on behalf of programs that will improve student achievement. The pure genius of that blows me away a little bit.
I look forward to supporting the great work done in the field and by the team here at DQC, and meeting all of the other data-loving geeks out there.

Tags:

Is Latest Work?:

Off

Is Aimee's Desk?:

Off

Don’t Call It a Rebrand

Elizabeth Laird — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:06:38 +0000

By now, you’ve hopefully seen with your own eyes the awesome upgrades we’ve made to our website. In addition to the new stories, resource library, and state tools, you might notice something else that’s different: a new logo!

Before we launched the new site, I shared our intention to release a new logo with a few colleagues (inside and outside DQC) and was often met with the same response, “You are guys are rebranding. Cool.” According to the (mostly) reliable source Wikipedia, “Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors, and competitors.”

I don’t believe this applies to our new website, or even our logo.

DQC’s tagline has always been, “Using data to improve student achievement.” We still believe that. We believe in it so much that we wanted to add a visual representation of what this means. The diploma in our D stands for more than just high school graduation but success throughout the education systems. The gold-sealed, rolled up piece of paper could be carried by a kindergartener’s parents as they’re leaving his or her graduation ceremony, thrust into the air by a first-generation college graduate, or gripped tightly by an adult who has just received a training certificate that will open new job opportunities.

So don’t call it a rebrand, because we aren’t creating a new identity. We’re reinforcing who we’ve always been: an organization of passionate individuals committed to improving outcomes for students through effective data use.

Tags:

Is Latest Work?:

Off

Is Aimee's Desk?:

Off

Where Does Your State Stand?

Elizabeth Dabney — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:01:12 +0000

Has your state made progress on DQC’s 10 State Actions to Ensure Effective Data Use? Find out whether your state is taking steps like linking data systems, developing governance structures, creating reports using longitudinal statistics, or promoting strategies to raise awareness of available data. Visit the newly redesigned Your State’s Progress section of DQC’s website to learn about efforts states are making to create a culture of effective data use in which quality data are not only collected but also used to increase student achievement.

The Your State’s Progress section of the website shares results and analyses from Data for Action 2012, DQC’s annual survey on the progress of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico toward implementing the 10 State Actions and addressing other key policy issues. Easy-to-use tools help stakeholders understand the Actions states have in place—and ways states can improve—to better use data in education decisionmaking.

Be sure to explore these special state-specific features:

Take an at-a-glance view of the Actions each state has implemented using the new interactive map.
Dive into the criteria the state has met to achieve each Action.
Find out where your state stands by comparing up to five states at both the Action and the criteria levels.
Read about how your state is working to achieve a culture of data use and connect data and policy.
Check out checklists that show whether your state has met critical data considerations in the areas of teacher effectiveness and college- and career-readiness policies.
Know who to contact in your state to learn more.

Take a national view of creating a culture of data use by reading our annual report and learning about our recommendations for states to move forward with each Action. Navigate our national maps for each Action to see how the number of states that have implemented each Action has grown over time.

Use your state’s survey results to kick start a conversation in your state! Information from the survey can help stakeholders in your state talk about topics such as linking data systems across the education pipeline; ensuring that data can be accessed, analyzed, and used; and building the capacity of all stakeholders to use longitudinal data.

Tags:

Is Latest Work?:

Off

Is Aimee's Desk?:

Off

Seek, and Ye Shall Find Resources

Evan Omerso — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:53:42 +0000

Do you remember DQC’s old resource library? If so, we’re sorry. Kidding! There was a lot to love about our old resource library—after all, it contained all our great reports, presentations, and other materials on using data to improve student achievement—but it was also bloated and fussy. Even we sometimes had trouble finding what we were looking for.

Well that era is gone! With the launch of our redesigned website Wednesday, we introduced a brand new Find Resources section, one that’s streamlined and user-friendly. Allow me to highlight just a few of its features:

Filtering: Not only can users filer by type, from fact sheets to videos, but also by topic area and state. The Find Resources search also pulls in content from other areas of the site, Success Stories and the blog, making it a one-stop-shop for the best resources DQC has to offer. And it's a cinch to add or remove as many filters as you want.

Fewer and Better: Our old library had over 1,000 resources, often making it difficult to find our best materials on a topic. No more! We’ve narrowed the section to include only materials authored by DQC, and we’ve removed many obsolete publications. If you’re looking for our latest work on, say, teacher effectiveness, you won’t be confused by a lot of old materials with outdated data. Foundational publications to our work are of course still available, and the most relevent topic-specific materials are now easier to find.

Sharing: It’s easier than ever to share our materials with your networks, as each resource features buttons to distribute it via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or email.

Find more: Find something you like? Don’t stop there. Every resource page features a list of related resources that may also interest you, as well as links to more materials that share the same topic.

We’ve worked hard to ensure our new Find Resources section gets you what you want as easily as possible. But it’s only as good as it is useful! Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Tags:

Is Latest Work?:

Off

Is Aimee's Desk?:

Off

Texas Leads the Charge for State of the Art Education Data Reporting

admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:17:15 +0000

Texas Leads the Charge for State-of-the-Art State-Level Reporting

Texas has over 1,000 school districts and each had systems for collecting and analyzing data. Up until recently, teachers didn't have access to good data because there was no timely state system of reports tailored for educators. At the same time, districts were legally obliged to submit data to the state through a system called the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS), which was out of date and unwieldy. Texas Student Data System (TSDS) provides two solutions to solve these problems: a timely set of dashboards for teachers, and a revised PEIMS application that will reduce the burden on administrators.

In 2005 the Texas Education Agency (TEA) recognized the need to improve the underlying architecture as well as the quality information available to all stakeholders. Based on these findings and continuous stakeholder input, TEA is developing an enhanced statewide longitudinal data system to improve the capacity for data-driven decisionmaking among educators, administrators, parents, and policymakers. "At the end of the day, this is about making a difference for our students," said Brian Rawson, director of Statewide Data Initiatives at TEA. "By improving information technology and reducing administrative costs, we can free our schools up to do what they do best—teach the next generation of Texans."

What Is the Texas Student Data System?

TSDS comprises five critical components that will aid stakeholders in accessing real-time data to best help their students:

State-sponsored Student Information System (SIS) addresses the needs of the state’s complex and fragmented operating environment. (More than 80 percent of districts in Texas have fewer than 5,000 students, and more than 60 percent have fewer than 1,000 students.) The SIS, which any district could use, will ensure that most districts in Texas can load to the Education Data Warehouse and provide an expanded feature set at state-negotiated, not-to-exceed prices.
Education Data Warehouse, including TSDS PEIMS. The Education Data Warehouse (EDW) houses the data that powers TEA's statewide longitudinal data system, as well as its PEIMS collection and data for the StudentGPS™ Dashboards. The ultimate goal is for this cloud-based solution to become the one common data collection platform for TEA, reducing the data collection burden on districts and charter schools and streamlining TEA's data collection process.
TSDS Unique ID: This identity management system ensures that each student or staff member has a single identity within the entire TSDS system, and the system will provide a more accurate longitudinal record of each student's progress throughout their career in Texas schools.
StudentGPS™ Dashboards: The dashboards gives educators a view into the whole student, providing an easy-to-understand picture of how a student is performing by combining multiple student data, such as grades, attendance, discipline, standardized test scores, program areas, and demographics, all in one place.
Texas P-20 Education Information Resource (TPEIR): The statewide data solution loads data from the certified PEIMS data store to the state’s P–20 data warehouse, TPEIR. In addition to 18 years of P–12 data and 17 years of higher education data from Texas colleges and universities, and information on teacher certification and teacher preparation programs, the warehouse will be expanded to link critical missing prekindergarten, college readiness, and workforce (wage, industry, and employment) data.

Role of the State: Texans Helping Texans

TEA realized that districts were struggling under the cost of collecting and submitting data, while high-quality, timely, useful reports were not available to them. After intensive engagement with stakeholders via interviews, focus groups, surveys, webinars, and teleconferences, TEA identified needs and priorities for a future system and created a new roadmap for enhancing Texas's statewide longitudinal data capability. TEA has taken its role seriously in listening to strong demand from districts to reduce their data collection burden. To meet that need TEA is developing one common data collection platform for Texas education data, TSDS. Districts have begun using the components of TSDS that have been released, and are already beginning to find value from the system. "I use TSDS to determine the highest areas of need on our campus and direct before determining which materials to purchase. This helps me know I am spending the funds we have available in the most effective way," said a Texas school administrator.

The Rollout

Currently the TSDS has released some components and is still developing others. By March 2013 seven limited production release districts (LPRs) had implemented the dashboards, and testing is in process for loading data to the EDW. By mid-2013, LPRs will test loading data to the data marts. In the 2013–14 school year, the entire end-to-end system will be available to early-adopter districts. In 2014 TEA will begin deploying TSDS to the rest of Texas districts. Educators from the LPRs are already gaining new insights into their students' performance and using the information to adjust their strategies and improve student outcomes. One Texas teacher said, “I am able to see students’ past academic and discipline issues, which makes it easier for me to address current academic and discipline issues. The vast amount of data available to us through TSDS helps me make better and more informed decisions about my students.”

Is Archived?:

Yes

Is Featured?:

Yes

Georgia Information Tunnel Linking District Ingenuity with State Resources to Make Data Matter

admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:15:11 +0000

Georgia’s Information Tunnel: Linking District Ingenuity with State Resources to Make Data Matter

Georgia is making strides in improving education in several ways, including supporting effective educators, turning around low-achieving schools, strengthening science and mathematics programming, and using high-quality common standards and assessments. However, all of these efforts require access to high-quality data to support decisionmaking, continuous improvement, and program evaluation.

Today the state of Georgia boasts an innovative and effective education data system that is powerfully transforming how thousands of district leaders, educators, and parents across the state access and use high-quality longitudinal data to support these and numerous other education initiatives, all aimed at improving student achievement.

The Georgia Tunnel

When state education leaders first sought to provide access to the statewide longitudinal data system, they were met with several challenges. Individual school districts had already invested in their own costly data management systems, which were largely incompatible with state-level databases. Worse, many districts were skeptical of the state’s goals for a comprehensive education data system. In 2009, after seven years of failed attempts to implement a system to harness the combined power of Georgia’s state and local education data, state-level vision and leadership were finally paired effectively with local collaboration to produce an original model that makes data useful and accessible for Georgia educators and stakeholders.

The centerpiece of Georgia’s model is a virtual “tunnel” that links data from a single state system directly to district-level student information systems (SIS) and allows district administrators, principals, teachers, and parents to access state education data through their district’s existing program. Local education agency officials can now view and compare state and local performance information on specific schools or programs to identify best practices, while teachers and parents have access to detailed longitudinal data to support children in the classroom and at home.

With the tunnel, Georgia has combined local data with state-level resources and made it easy to use education data in meaningful ways. By not only amassing vast amounts of education data but also making its application practical for multiple stakeholders, Georgia moved from a compliance model of data collection to a service model that promotes effective data use by educators and stakeholders.

Georgia’s Role: Providing Infrastructure and Support

The Georgia Department of Education was uniquely situated to actively support data use and the production of the tunnel with state resources, leadership, and stakeholder engagement. In creating the data system tunnel, the Department of Education involved a users' group of the Georgia Student Information System (GSIS) in discussions about the state SIS and its needs. Carolyn Oliver, the coordinator of registration & student information at Pauling County Schools, described the model’s iterative development process and outcomes saying, “They listened to us as customers as to what would be important to us and what we needed, so that changed our whole mindset of us being involved in the project. . . . To be able to get that information back in a useful way, we now see the benefit of giving the data to the state to begin with.” After the construction of the system, state Chief Information Officer Bob Swiggum demonstrated the model to individual teachers and members of GSIS to ensure buy-in and ultimately change the culture of data collection and use in the state. Finally, using part of a federal grant, the state provided funding to each SIS vendor working with districts in the state to connect the state system into the local one.

Evidence of Impact: Meaningful Tools for Districts, Schools, Teachers, and Parents

Despite years of uncertainty about the state’s data initiative, the ease and usefulness of the tunnel led to its immediate and widespread adoption in districts across the state. Use of the tunnel is entirely optional for districts; the high implementation numbers speak to the tremendous value the system provides to educators and stakeholders. The tunnel, launched in September 2010, was in use in 75 of the state’s 180 school districts by the end of the calendar year, 160 districts by the end of 2011, and all 180 districts by the end of 2012.

Figure 1: State Gets Kudos for System to Track Students, Nancy Badertscher, 2011)

Teacher support for the system has also been enthusiastic. Now a teacher in Georgia can easily view each of his or her students’ progress in different subjects over time and create personalized learning activities that build on strengths and fill gaps. Pam Williams, a teacher at Appling County High School and the 2011 Georgia Teacher of the Year, said, “The longitudinal data system is like an answered prayer for many of us as teachers because we spent so much time that could be utilized in other ways going and trying to get the information. . . . [Now] we’re able to have time to take that information and build the lessons for meaningful learning, which is what our real purpose is.”

In January 2013 the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that use of the tunnel among teachers is high in many areas of the state. While state education officials hope to increase use in Atlanta and other urban areas that currently rely heavily on complex local data systems, the state remains perfectly positioned to continue collaborating with local districts, transforming the data use culture in Georgia and, ultimately, students’ lives.

Is Archived?:

Yes

Is Featured?:

Video URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaZk57oNLkA

Tennessee Using Data to Support Policy Priorities

admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:11:55 +0000

Tennessee Using Data to Support Policy Priorities

Like many states today, Tennessee has a big agenda for education reform. In an effort to advance student achievement, Tennessee has enacted policies ranging from ensuring that every student graduates high school college- and career-ready to evaluating teachers and principals in new and robust ways. All of these initiatives require high-quality, longitudinal data.

Fortunately for Tennessee, it's been collection the necessary data—Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) data— for more than 20 years. After decades of data collection with limited data use, today Tennessee is harnessing the power of TVAAS data to support reform initiatives aimed at improving teaching and learning across the state. As a result, educators are accessing TVAAS data more frequently than ever before and using it to guide their practice.

What Is TVAAS?

The Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) uses multiple years of student data from a variety of assessments to statistically predict the performance of each student based on his or her past performance. It then reports back to the teacher and principal the extent to which the statistical expectation for that student’s achievement was met.

With this information, teachers are able to

determine whether students are making progress and in what content areas
differentiate instruction based on the progress of each student
create student growth trajectories to targets
identify and support at-risk students as well as those who need additional challenges

Principals are able to

make data-based decisions regarding the extent to which a teacher has met or exceeded the statistical expectation for a student’s achievement
better assign students to teachers
evaluate and support teachers in their improvement and professional growth

State policymakers are able to

identify the teacher training programs that are best preparing teachers for the classroom
ascertain the effectiveness of particular districts and schools in meeting the needs of various subgroups of students
determine where growth is occurring even when aggregate achievement figures are below targeted levels

The State Role: Building Infrastructure and Encouraging Use

The state of Tennessee was uniquely situated to build and maintain TVAAS and provide appropriate access to local users. Leaders in Tennessee realized, however, that access alone would not be enough to drive use. In 2010 the state enacted legislation mandating that 35 percent of an educator’s evaluation be based on TVAAS data. As a result, teacher interest in understanding TVAAS soared.

“People have an incentive like never before to understand how value-add works,” said Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Data & Communications Division, Zachary Rossley, Tennessee Department of Education. “We’re constantly trying to improve the user experience.”

Despite this surge in interest, leaders in Tennessee understood that while they could mandate that TVAAS data be used in educator evaluations, they could not mandate that educators use TVAAS data to inform instructional decisions. For educators to use the data, they would have to find value in it.

Taking a Step Further

In an effort to make TVAAS data more valuable for educators, the Tennessee Department of Education began working to understand the ways teachers interact with data. The department conducted focus groups and usability studies to determine how to better meet the data needs of Tennessee educators.

As a result, teachers can now

download reports and manipulate data to their needs
use scatter plots to visualize student growth scores as they relate to various demographics
more easily understand the language used to describe trends in TVAAS data
access TVAAS data earlier than ever before—as early as mid-June

Evidence of Impact: Increasing Educator Use

Tennessee’s efforts to prioritize educator needs have gone a long way toward moving Tennessee from collecting data to facilitating its use. As a result, more Tennessee educators than ever before are accessing TVAAS data. While in 2010 the website where teachers access TVAAS data saw approximately 250,000 unique logins, in 2012 that number grew to 320,000. Moreover, teachers continue to log in throughout the year, a key indicator that they’re finding value in the resources available to guide their practice.

"Once I began to see what predictions were, I began to understand why certain students struggled with things," said Cory Concus, a math and science teacher at Covington High School. "I looked at those predictions and at that data that we have for them, and as a teacher, I'm able to—in my mind—make that transition for them and say, what you're probably missing is this."

Feature Icon:

TVAAS.jpg

Is Archived?:

Yes

Is Featured?:

Yes

Video URL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-7Q20nDn0o

Kentucky Hitting a Home Run with High School Feedback Reports

admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:04:56 +0000

Kentucky Hitting a Home Run with High School Feedback Reports that Reduce Remediation and Increase College Enrollment

Kentucky, known for its vast grasslands and famed horseraces, is also home to a state with a thriving college-going culture.

Recent trends suggest incremental increases in college enrollment and decreases in college remediation. The state believes that part of this progress can be attributed to the development of succinct, easy-to-read, and easy-to-interpret high school feedback reports. These reports allow school leaders, parents, school boards, and other key education stakeholders to understand how well their high schools’ students perform in college and take actions to ensure that they succeed in postsecondary education.

Kentucky’s High School Feedback

Kentucky’s High School Feedback reports allow users to compare college-going rates and high school performance indicators with other schools at the district and state-levels.These reports include not only data on enrollments, but also additional information that are crucial to postsecondary success, such as remediation rates and average GPA.

In 2009 the Kentucky legislature sought to provide this more robust picture of college success by requiring the state to improve enrollments while decreasing remediation. With this information, policymakers, administrators, and teachers are better able to identify areas where a particular school struggles to adequately prepare its students for postsecondary education and align its curriculum to address problematic areas. These data are not collected from a survey or self-reported by the student. They are provided by matching actual student-level electronic records from the Kentucky Department of Education with official enrollment records from the Council on Postsecondary Education for students attending public two- and four-year institutions and independent colleges and universities.

"These reports represent the most complete picture of college-going information from Kentucky's public high schools that we have ever had access to. With more than 60 percent of our graduates going to college, this is a good indication that more of our graduates are seeking postsecondary credentials than ever before," said Charles McGrew, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Education and Workforce Statistics.

State Leadership Role in Producing High School Feedback Reports

In 2009 Kentucky created the Kentucky P–20 Data Collaborative, a joint effort from the Kentucky Department of Education, Council on Postsecondary Education, Education Professional Standards Board, the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, and the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority. Through a series of grants, the agencies built a data warehouse of information from prekindergarten through college and beyond, making it possible to link student, teacher, postsecondary, and certification data so that informed decisions about important strategies could be formulated. To evaluate the effectiveness of the state’s high school feedback reports, the P–20 Data Collaborative solicited feedback from stakeholders and practitioners. Through this feedback, the state learned that educators were not using the reports. In response, the state turned their attention to users' needs in an effort to make the reports more actionable, raise awareness, and communicate that the reports were intended to support continuous improvement.

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear signed an executive order, enacted into law in 2013, creating the Kentucky Center for Education and Workforce Statistics (KCEWS). This builds on and expands the great work of the P–20 Data Collaborative by creating a state-funded office to further examine how students are prepared for college and by linking education with workforce and other outcomes.

The Lasting Impact of High School Feedback

The P–20 Data Collaborative worked with educators to assess the utility and design of high school feedback reports. This effort led to the development of timely and actionable reports that led to a shift in how well college-bound students performed with increased high school graduation and first-time postsecondary enrollment rates.

Figure 1: Graduation Rate Data 2011 State Trends, Kentucky Department of Education, 2012.

Figure 2: First Time Undergraduate Student Enrollment by Institution, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, 2012.

Kentucky’s production of a transparent, actionable, and timely high school feedback report is a monumental step in understanding how individual high schools in Kentucky are preparing students for success at the postsecondary level and are leading to better preparation of students entering college for the first time. The information contained in these high school feedback reports “is vital to improving alignment between Kentucky’s high schools and postsecondary institutions and to the overall success of our students,” said McGrew. “The reports are publicly available so parents, educators, school board members, officials, and others can see how their local schools and districts compare across the state." Kentucky has recently started to produce early childhood feedback reports as well as first-year college success reports. Both of these new types of reports will provide an even richer picture of the college-going culture within the state.

Is Archived?:

Yes

Is Featured?:

Data Quality Campaign

Report Cards Aren’t Just for Students

Tags:

Category:

Empowering Parents with Education Data

Tags:

Category:

Geek Chic

Tags:

Category:

Don’t Call It a Rebrand

Tags:

Where Does Your State Stand?

Tags:

Seek, and Ye Shall Find Resources

Tags:

Texas Leads the Charge for State of the Art Education Data Reporting

Georgia Information Tunnel Linking District Ingenuity with State Resources to Make Data Matter

Georgia’s Information Tunnel: Linking District Ingenuity with State Resources to Make Data Matter

Tennessee Using Data to Support Policy Priorities

Kentucky Hitting a Home Run with High School Feedback Reports

Kentucky Hitting a Home Run with High School Feedback Reports that Reduce Remediation and Increase College Enrollment