Schools give many tests throughout the year to identify students’ skills and gaps in their learning, including universal screening, diagnostic, formative, interim, and summative assessments. These tests generate a huge amount of data meant to guide instruction—but all of this information can be overwhelming if teachers don’t have an easy way to process it.

There is such a thing as having too much data. If teachers have to sort through an abundance of data to figure out what their students need, and if they don’t know which data points they should focus on to achieve the greatest impact on learning, then they won’t use data to inform their instruction—and the money invested in data analysis and reporting tools will have been largely wasted.

That used to be our experience in California’s Buena Park School District ^[1], which serves nearly 5,000 students in grades K-8. We had a great data tool, but teachers weren’t using it. After making a few simple changes, however, we saw our teachers’ use of data begin to skyrocket.

Here are three key takeaways from our experience.

1. Collect student data in one simple place.
Our district uses Illuminate Data and Assessment ^[2] (DnA) to help teachers make better decisions that lead to student achievement gains. With this software, we’re able to collect student data from many different sources and assessments and present it through a single dashboard. Teachers don’t have to go hunting for information in separate software systems. Everything they need to inform their instruction is in one place, saving valuable time.

2. Make the information easy to read and understand.
Our data system allows users to view more than 20 standard reports, and we can create custom reports as well. Each report is intended to drive conversation—not just present information. For instance, the reports contain simple graphs and charts as well as a brief written summary that explains what the report shows and the questions it answers. Teachers aren’t data scientists, and we’ve found that our teachers appreciate having these concise summaries to help them digest the information.

3. Give teachers only the information they need to improve teaching and learning.
Even though we had a powerful system that collected data in one place and made the information easy for teachers to understand, we still had many teachers who weren’t using the system to drive instruction. We realized during a staff meeting how few people were actually using it when we asked teachers to log in and follow along with our presentation—and many admitted they didn’t know their password.

That was a big wake-up call for us. We recognized that if we wanted teachers to use the platform, we had to simplify the number of reports for them to look at, so they wouldn’t be inundated with data.

Illuminate DnA has a dashboard that is fully customizable. Users can add or create “tiles” for various applications and reports, and clicking on a tile from the home screen takes you directly to that resource. To make the system as easy as possible, we created customized dashboards for each grade level. Each of these dashboards contains tiles only for the handful of reports and resources that we think will have the greatest impact on student success at that grade level.

For example, a kindergarten teacher will see tiles for kindergarten standards, kindergarten readiness reports, Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) results, DIBELS results, and intervention plans. A fifth-grade teacher sees tiles for the fifth-grade standards, Interim Assessment Block (IAB) results, EasyCBM results (an indicator for our Response to Intervention system), and state testing resources.

We also push out tiles to teachers at all grade levels, including attendance, grade books, math pacing guides, and writing rubrics. We’ve narrowed in on the reports and resources that teachers use regularly and avoided resources we knew they would only use infrequently. We wanted these tiles to become an intricate part of our teachers’ daily experience, and by streamlining the amount of data we put at their fingertips we have seen that happen.

This simple change has paid big dividends. Our teachers are now regularly using data to shape their practice. They are sharing and discussing their use of these tiles within grade-level teams. They have even begun asking us to add tiles for other reports they want to access—and they no longer suffer from data overload. Best of all, we are noticing gains in student achievement as a result.

The deadline has passed for states to submit final Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans. Now it’s up to school districts to figure out how to capture and report data about student performance. While the additional reporting can seem like a burden, buried in that task is a great opportunity to boost strategic decision-making capabilities. District administrators just need a simple method to look at student data in a new way.

ESSA reporting requirements include the need to publish specific educational data sets separated by student subgroups and categories. School districts are challenged to rethink how they collect, analyze, and present data.

One Chicago-area high school district—let’s call it Chi-High—discovered the data needed for ESSA compliance reports also provides the administration with key insights about students. Better yet, they are using that discovery to move the needle on student performance.

Silos of data

Chi-High first had to figure out how to address the issue of siloed data. They had troves of information about students stored in their student information system, a data storage warehouse, and Excel spreadsheets on various administrator’s computers. They wondered, “How can we retrieve the stats we want and combine inputs meaningfully without adding costly resources?”

Chi-High simplified the process by using an analytics platform that pulls data into one sandbox as needed from disparate systems. Instead of having district staff manually extract data from several sources to populate complex spreadsheets, the analytics platform refreshes data and related analytics automatically. Reports populated with key data points are set to run at regular intervals and automatically feed into an analytics platform engine that calculates specific key performance indicators (KPIs).

Do more than just meet federal requirements

The value of the time saved with the analytics platform is immeasurable to the productivity of the district’s administrative team to meet ESSA requirements. But, Chi-High quickly discovered they could do even more with the tool.

Here’s where the real value emerges.

Chi-High administrators meet six times a year to review students’ grades in a distribution model. Department heads use this data to make informed decisions about course offerings, align support services to student needs, and review students’ progress toward college and career readiness standards and workplace experience courses.

Previously, a request was sent at six-week intervals to the district’s data managers to pull course schedules and grades for all students. Then a team of administrators spent weeks formatting it in complicated spreadsheets. By the time the report was complete, it was time to request the data for the next reporting period. Administrators made decisions based on data that was already a reporting period old.

Now, Chi-High proactively uses near-real-time data to make effective changes. Through a series of pre-set dashboards, they can review distribution models within a day of the data collection. The administrative team and department heads can quickly make decisions supporting student readiness and performance growth.

Bringing data to life

The easy-to-read, customizable dashboards provide a quick analysis at a number of levels depending on what a reviewer wants to study. In just a few clicks, Chi-High can drill down from a district level to an individual student.

For example, Chi-High set up a guided dashboard for Advanced Placement (AP) enrollments and exam scores to drill into metrics to track AP data.

• District: What percent of students enroll in AP courses? What are average AP exam scores and grades? How are these metrics distributed in the district across various student demographics such as race/ethnicity, gender, Individual Education Plan, or low income?
• Building views: This view uses the same metrics as the district-level but focuses on each school building. It also includes enrollment rates and AP exam scores by course.
• AP course: Tracks the demographic makeup of each AP course, enrollment, and exam score trends, plus specific students in each course.
• Individual students: Student profiles are populated with relevant information to assess performance and needs, including student’s demographic information, attendance rate and trend, co-curricular involvement, course history and grade list, SAT scores, and other KPIs deemed important.

Added analytics in action

Chi-High also discovered the analytics platform simplifies the process of assessing student performance according to their established segmentation model.

The segmentation model places students into career and college tracks based on specific metrics. The district uses the model to ensure students stay on the right path—or move to a higher path—and are ready for the next step when they graduate.

Because the entire district now has tools to view the same metrics, they can have honest conversations about changes that need to be made.

Going beyond ESSA

Every state has some flexibility to set standards for how it measures student performance to meet the ESSA mandate. As more districts like Chi-High discover the impact of reporting requirements and realize there are opportunities to do more with new analytics capabilities, they’ll need to collect, analyze, and review data outputs. With the right tools, they will find they can save time and have better analysis to identify ways to improve student performance.

Classroom assessments represented a nearly $1.6 billion market ^[3] in 2017, and that market is expected to grow by 30 percent through 2020. In fact, classroom assessment now makes up a majority of the testing market, surpassing state testing.

The benefit of formative assessments

Formative assessments are one of the most widely used types of classroom assessments. A key benefit is that formative assessment practices have the potential to increase student learning. With formative assessments, teachers check for students’ understanding during instruction—rather than at the end of a unit or course—and then adjust their instruction accordingly.

Digital assessments, which are quickly replacing print, are making the process even richer. Students can access a variety of item types that can make the assessment process more engaging—and more informative for teachers. Further, the technology can save teachers’ time by doing the number crunching and organizing the data to help them identify students in need of intervention.

But is all that formative assessment data actually being used to close the gap between a student’s current level of learning and the learning goal? Many times, it’s not. A report ^[4] by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California, Los Angeles found that “teachers are better at drawing reasonable inferences about student levels of understanding from assessment information than they are in deciding the next instructional steps.”

In other words, while teachers are able to effectively interpret what the data is telling them about their students’ learning, they often have difficulty translating that evidence into action and taking the next appropriate instructional step to close learning gaps.

Too many education apps, too little time

With the rise of Chromebooks and tablets in classrooms, education apps can provide a cost-effective solution to address the diverse learning needs of students. However, with nearly one million education apps in existence, it’s easy to see why teachers are overwhelmed with how to leverage this vast amount of content to support students’ individual needs.

The reality is that teachers don’t have the time to research, find, and assign the best apps for addressing the specific skills that each student is lacking.

Bridging the gap

But what if educators had a vendor-neutral mobile-learning platform ^[5] that could prescribe appropriate content to meet each child’s learning needs from a library of carefully vetted, high-quality apps from any provider? What if this mobile-app-prescription engine were embedded within a school system’s assessment or learning management system so that teachers could click a button and receive a list of the mobile-learning content most relevant for particular students? What if these apps were fully integrated into the platform to allow for single-sign-on access by students and allow educators to track key performance metrics and better protect students’ data privacy as they use the apps?

With this type of mobile-learning platform, teachers would be able to bridge the gap between assessment data and action to provide an individualized learning experience for students. By linking this platform with programs such as a formative assessment system, standards-based gradebook, or online individualized education plan program, teachers could simply click a button to produce a list of recommended apps to support the personalized learning needs of each student.

Realizing the promise of formative assessment

After teachers administer an assessment and review the results, the next logical question is, “Now what?” A mobile-learning platform makes it easier for teachers to take that next instructional step by recommending an intervention strategy based on a student’s needs. Then, as students work independently on the apps they have been assigned, teachers can track their performance and time spent as well as more detailed data such as prompts that may be required to support a student’s success with an activity.

With real-time assessment information and instant access to the right learning content, the movement from evidence to action becomes seamless, helping teachers realize the promise of formative assessment as an effective tool that can lead to personalized learning experiences for all students.

How do you get teachers to use data? One district zeroed in on what’s important

Every day, educators amass a tremendous amount of academic data. Many of that data ultimately gets entered into online systems and run through analysis software and teacher dashboards. But that data is only valuable if it can be easily accessed and analyzed, and acted upon in a timely manner. And only if the teacher finds it worthwhile enough to complete that process.

In the past, my district used a scanning system to scan paper test forms and quickly make the data available to teachers for their review. The problem was that seven years after we launched the system, I was still teaching our teachers how to use it. Because it wasn’t user friendly, it wasn’t used very extensively, which meant that data was going to waste.

In 2013, we set out to find a system that would be easier to use, more visual, and better at organizing data in a concise way, and that summer we began using a new assessment and data system (we picked Performance Matters ^[6]). To introduce its capabilities, we held district-wide trainings for our teachers. A few months later, however, we realized we now faced a challenge at the opposite end of the spectrum. With our previous system, our teachers couldn’t get enough data. With our new system, they had access to more data than they knew what to do with.

To help teachers focus on the data most important to them, we launched another round of trainings. To make things as easy as possible, we decided to concentrate on two dashboards we believe are vital to teachers’ daily practice in the classroom and to school improvement planning.

Item Analysis

Our Item Analysis dashboard provides item-level detail showing the percentage and number of students who chose each answer (multiple choice items) or earned each score (other item types) on a given assessment. This is particularly helpful when looking for students’ misconceptions. If, for example, a teacher sees that 60 percent of students got item No. 1 wrong and that all of these students chose the same answer, they know exactly what they need to re-teach. It can also help determine when an answer choice needs to be updated or replaced.

The Item Analysis dashboard also shows the breakdown of the standards on the assessment and how students scored overall on each standard. This helps teachers easily identify which standards students are struggling with, so they can target their instruction accordingly.

In addition, the Item Analysis dashboard illustrates each student’s performance on the standards. Because teachers can instantly see which students are non-proficient, proficient or advanced on each standard, they can easily differentiate their instruction and provide remediation to those students who need it. Teachers say this is a huge time-saver, since they can simply click on a standard and have the re-teaching group immediately displayed for them.

Student Item Analysis

Our Student Item Analysis dashboard gives an overall percentage score for each student as well as how many points the student earned on the test. Teachers can then use these scores in their gradebooks.

This dashboard also shows how each student responded to each question and whether the answer was right or wrong. Teachers can use this data to review the test with students if needed.

Finally, the Student Item Analysis dashboard shows what the most common incorrect answer was and the percentage of students who chose it. This helps teachers address common misconceptions.

Collaborative planning

Both the Item Analysis and Student Item Analysis dashboards provide valuable data for collaborative planning sessions at each school. During these sessions, school leadership teams and teachers can view their students’ data so they can share best practices, and offer or ask for assistance. Because the data is easy to access and understand, they now spend less time organizing data and more time doing what needs to be done to improve student outcomes.

We’ve also provided trainings for our principals, assistant principals, and school leadership teams on how to use data for school improvement planning. The Item Analysis dashboard is especially helpful here. The item-level detail and standards breakdown give school leaders the data they need create standards-specific goals, so they can be more much focused in their school improvement plans.

Thanks to the wide use of these two dashboards, our teachers and school leaders now spend far less time on data retrieval and significantly more time on data analysis and decision making. The key is to keep it simple. Give teachers the tools and data they need to be successful, and give them opportunities to collaborate and use that data to improve their practice. Then, after teachers become comfortable with these key dashboards, offer more advanced training to show them how to use other dashboards to dive deeper into the data.

Michelle Hall is an administrator in the Accountability Office, Instructional Data Division for Anne Arundel County Public Schools ^[7] in Maryland.

While student safety remains schools’ top priority during threats of natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes, school administrators and IT leaders must also ensure that they take measures to protect valuable student and school data.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated the East Coast, knocking out power and, along with it, school districts’ access to technology and data centers. Devastating tornadoes, including the 2013 tornado in Moore, Okla., and the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Mo., rocked school communities.

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) launched its IT Crisis Preparedness Leadership initiative in 2008 after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and other catastrophic events. The initiative gives school administrators and technology leaders free resources to help school systems plan for and respond to the next crisis, focusing on the role of technology leaders, identifying best practices, and devising strategies for shutdown and startup processes.

(Next page: Important steps school administrators should take)CoSN’s IT Crisis Preparedness Leadership website ^[8] includes information on what a school’s or district’s planning process should include: plans for disaster mitigation and prevention before disaster strikes; communication and continued availability of services during a disaster; and following a disaster, evaluation of the plan’s and ongoing planning’s effectiveness. The website resources emphasize the importance of communication to ensure that all involved understand their designated role in the event of a crisis.

The site also includes a 10 Step Technology Recovery Checklist to help IT and school administrators. The checklist includes important actions such as contacting critical IT vendors immediately, accessing data stored on old servers even if the servers are damaged, and contacting off-site data backup providers to alert them to the situation.

“Sadly in the past several years, cities and communities nationwide have been wrought with severe devastation by natural disasters, from hurricanes on and up the Gulf and East Coasts, to flooding along the Mississippi, to Western fires, to tornadoes across the Midwest and South, including very recently in Moore, Okla. These unfortunate, still raw realities necessitate that school technology leaders are actively prepared for the next catastrophe to strengthen student safety and maintain business continuity throughout their districts,” said Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN. “Provided at no cost, our resources help to equip K-12 leaders with the knowledge and foresight needed to think ahead of the next crisis and prepare for the unexpected.”

When it comes to securing and restoring data, school administrators should make electronic and paper copies of vital records and recovery plans, and should maintain offsite data storage and data centers. Testing an offsite data backup provider’s disaster recovery plan is a good idea, too.

The website also includes planning and recovery tips and features case studies detailing the experiences and best practices of other school administrators K-12 technology officers. For CoSN members, there are additional materials available at a cost, including a planning workbook containing worksheets that guide chief technology officers through each step in the planning process.

Education stakeholders and reformers increasingly focus on data to help inform instruction and offer clues on student achievement patterns, and a partnership among three organizations aims to help districts use data in pursuit of those goals.

“Closing the Gap: Turning Data into Action” is a collaboration among the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and Gartner Inc., a global information technology research and advisory company, to support schools as they move forward in implementing these new systems and practices.

As the initiative matures, participating districts are sharing how they are using student data to impact classroom practice and student achievement.

Officials in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) hope to move toward “having data at the classroom level, where teachers can talk about student data and what it means to them,” said Ted Davis, director of information technology at FCPS. “[We will] have the opportunity to use that data in a real-time manner to impact instruction.”

(Next page: How FCPS uses student data)Here’s how FCPS is using student data:

• When the district began using the Electronic Curriculum Assessment Resource Tool (eCART) system, which gives teachers and school administrators access to web-based, district-approved curriculum, assessments, tools, and resources, it gained the ability to gather and use formative data as well. That increased the data available to teachers, who analyze that data and use it to positively impact instruction.
• FCPS created a learning environment for students, teachers, and parents that fosters communication, collaboration, sharing of instructional resources, and both independent and group learning, and then enhanced that learning environment by integrating tools that support the instructional cycle.
• The district’s next step is to “put that data into the hands of students, to give them the ability to take ownership of their learning and start to manage their own education,” Davis said.

FCPS invested in technology in part to “build up a data culture,” said Aaron Sterling, an FCPS technology specialist.

Establishing a close working relationship with the district curriculum department is important when it comes to collecting, interpreting, and leveraging student data, said Robert Calvert, chief information officer for Houston’s Fort Bend Independent School District.

In 2006, Fort Bend took a hard look at classroom instruction and placed a focus on improving student grades, which is where data-driven decision-making came into play. The district implemented the Leadership and Learning Center’s Data Teams ^[9] methodology to focus on critical needs of the district’s campuses, curriculum, and students.

Here’s how Fort Bend ISD is using student data:

• Under the Data Teams methodology, which uses “small, grade-level department, course, content, or organizational teams that collaboratively analyze data and select instructional strategies in order to drive instruction and improve professional practice,” district leaders developed an internal curriculum that met state requirements, student academic needs, and district goals.
• Members on the data teams reviewed assessments, graded student activities, and determined appropriate enrichment or remediation strategies while developing collective lesson plans.
• They created a Pacing Guide, along with a central repository of certified assessment resources, to support those efforts.
• District teams created a comprehensive accountability framework and a continuous improvement process outline.
• Administrators designated “helping teachers” to help other educators understand the data, what it means, and ensure that instructional materials and practices meet those needs.

“Make sure the public understands what you’re doing. Having parents understand what you’re doing, and why data analysis is important, [is key],” Calvert advised.  “You can’t do this unless you have of course the data, but you also have to have dedicated resources to do that.”

(Next page: How a California district uses student data)California’s Sanger Unified School District wanted to replace its existing data tool, which generated assessments and aggregated data, in favor of professional learning communities (PLCs).

The district needed the ability to generate common formative assessments that provided regular data on student learning, and it also needed a method of generating data on student achievement gains after interventions. Because English Language Learners (ELLs) make up 25 percent of Sanger ISD, district officials also wanted to monitor ELL progress.

Here is how Sanger USD is using student data:

• Each school principal in the district delivers an annual public report that includes a five-year disaggregated analysis of student data.
• A District Progress Assessment is developed and administered three times each year to measure student progress and achievement in terms of mastering essential standards.
• Educators developed an ELL assessment to monitor ELL student gains and struggles.
• The district generated common formative assessments that provide regular data on student learning between administration of the District Progress Assessment

“Having data is great, but it’s not the answer—it’s responding to the data that’s the answer,” said Marc Johnson, the district’s superintendent.

Sanger said district leaders and educators follow four basic questions when they approach student learning:

1. What do educators want students to learn?
2. How do educators know students learned it?
3. How do educators respond when they know learning has not occurred?
4. How do educators respond when they know learning has already occurred?

The role of leadership is especially important, he said, because school leaders “lead the learning at the schools.”

A redesign of a school district’s information systems is always a challenge, but Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools (WSFCS) was further complicated by rapid growth, changing demographics and school choice. WSFCS is the fifth-largest system in North Carolina, with 80 schools and approximately 52,000 students and 8,000 teachers and administrators. The system gains about 500 students a year, so new schools are regularly being opened.

In a district with significant ethnic and socio-economic diversity, it is critical to have more than percentages and summaries of student achievement, but to know which students and teachers might need extra help. Distribution of students changes, sometimes markedly. Parents can choose from their neighborhood schools, another school in their zones, or from 15 magnet programs.

Despite dynamic growth and change, and faced with a hodgepodge of disparate data sources and ad hoc processes, WSFCS was able to create a unified information infrastructure that now delivers meaningful, interactive, visual reports to support data-driven decisions. How did we do it?

Redefining the information environment

Find and evaluate the current data sources.
Five years ago, the WSFCS director of accountability, superintendent and director of curriculum spent a year studying the district’s different data sources. The result was scary. The data was everywhere, fragmented and overlapping. They needed to pull all of it together.

(Next page: More steps and tips)

Establish an authoritative source for data.
When an initiative like this is launched, everybody thinks their data system is the authoritative source. We found that what should have been the same report would show different information because it had come from two different data sources. My group had some difficult conversations to convince people to trust a single source.

Determine what information is needed, in what form.
We frequently consulted the leadership team and asked administrators to identify the reports and data they needed. Administrators emphasized clean data and drill-down capabilities – right down to individual student performance.  Instead of making assumptions, they consulted elementary, middle and high school principals to identify and help develop the most important reporting tools.

Cleanse and validate the data.
The databases ranged from having excellent to unusable data. Some databases were eliminated. The existing databases contained duplicate records, inconsistent data entry conventions and missing elements. We selected analytics provider SAS to consolidate and cleanse the data. In addition to improving the quality of analysis and reports, data cleansing brought some ancillary benefits:

• By ensuring that address information conformed to USPS requirements for mass mailings, the district dramatically reduced the number of returned letters and saved $5,000 on one mailing alone.
• Matching siblings reduced the mailing list to 41,000 households and helped with both the Free/Reduced Lunch Program application process and identifying siblings for the Parent Assistant program.

 

Create repeatable data integration routines.
Even though data integration jobs are shown in a graphical display, the tool is creating code in the background at the same time. A programmer can hard-code what needs to be reported and can come back to it at any time to use again. Automated data integration proved its value for streamlining repetitive data integration tasks, such as bringing in the nightly data set from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.

Publish the data in an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand format.
I wanted our interfaces to be as simple as possible for principals and district leaders.  We needed to put data in an interactive, web-based reporting with drill-down capabilities with easy navigation.  Now, we store report processes and make them available for users, who access real-time information through a portal.

Establish best practices for data collection and requests.
So often people would want a report immediately, not understanding it could take days to build it out. It didn’t matter. Everybody wants data and they want it now.

My team implemented a process where users have to put in a ticket, just like if their computer was broken. From the superintendent to newspaper reporters to the grants people, we require them to submit a ticket. Tickets help us track in-process and pending requests, identify duplicated efforts, and manage users’ expectations.

Insights on demand, just a click or two away

A data warehouse provides a secure location to house a broad array of data – from student demographics to individual test scores to summaries for AYP reporting. Our first initiatives focused on school improvement and rapid evaluation of programs.

Interactive reports with drill-down capabilities.
A walk-through of a sample course enrollment report would go something like this:

Choose a course from a pull-down menu to display a chart of course enrollment by teacher. Zoom in on one teacher to see she has 55 students and teaches Algebra 1. Let’s say the user knows from value-add reports that this teacher is faring poorly, so they look at her student performance.

Drill down to see which students are in her classes, click on or enter a student name, which provides a complete, detailed profile. Student achievement, test score data from grades three to 12, absences, discipline record – it’s all right there. There is no need to go to a file cabinet, or teacher, or data manager to get the information.

The same drill-down capabilities bring new value to the AYP report, which is now available for daily monitoring (or for a specific date range), not just for end-of-year reporting. A bar chart shows subgroups relative to the AYP threshold. Immediately an administrator can look at detail for subgroups. They can drill down to look more closely at an underperforming subgroup. By knowing where students are struggling, instruction choices can be made to help them meet AYP goals.

District wide student locator application

Previously, every school maintained its own roster of students. In a choice system, a child could have come from any number of schools. The district found elementary school kids were being dropped off at high schools. Administrators needed a way to quickly look up a phone number. What a simple concept – but with the previous data islands, it was very difficult.

We created a student locator, so any administrator across the system can pull up a list of all the kids, identify a student, drill down to see who he is living with, emergency contact information, etc, to get that child safely to where he needs to be.

That report is one of the most popular. It seems so simple, but it required compiling data across the system for 52,000 students.

There are plenty of opportunities ahead. The data team is expanding the repository of reports to support data-driven decision making, and using data integration tools to automate jobs for other recurring requests. Administrators are using these reports, and they’re hungry for more. By focusing on what decision makers need, we feel like we are a critical piece of making all of our students and schools successful.

Dr. Betty Weycker is the Assistant Superintendent for Technology for North Carolina’s Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System . Dr. Weycker believes it is imperative that technology is utilized and embraced as a resource for both curriculum and data management/analysis. Development of a state of the art infrastructure for technology has been critical in her vision to leverage resources available and to align more opportunities for partnerships and collaboration with businesses, foundations, and other agencies.

Educators and administrators are collecting an enormous amount of data about the progress of their students and schools. Now that this information has been collected, how can it be used to improve education?

What administrators and teachers need is a practical system that organizes school and student data in a way that is easily understood and readily available during the school day, according to a collaboration by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and Gartner Inc.

School districts are looking to purchase student information systems and learning management systems to help them with this task.

Watch CoSN CEO Keith Krueger’s interview with Comcast Newsmakers (aired on CNN):

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(Next page: A closer look at the collaborative’s goals—and nine templates it has created to help educators leverage school data)

According to the collaborative, sorting through the available products in today’s market to find the appropriate one for a particular district can be a daunting task, which is why the project has developed a collection of tools to help schools and districts nationwide use student data. This collection is called “Closing the Gap: Turning Data into Action.”

“Teachers, in today’s data-driven culture, are overwhelmed by the student data available to them,” said AASA Executive Director and eSchool News contributor ^[10] Dan Domenech. “They know that the data can help them be more effective, but they need help in identifying which information is the most important. Closing the Gap is an important link in this process.”

The goal of the project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is to offer school districts:

• Recommendations for the selection and implementation of student information systems and learning management systems;
• Best practices for implementation of these solutions in schools and classrooms; and
• Suggestions for moving schools to a more data-rich culture.

Closing the Gap also includes nine templates for school districts’ use, each providing guidance on a different phase of the selection and implementation process.

The templates include a checklist of critical success factors, a suggested timeline, a delineation of project roles and responsibilities for school personnel, a cost planning guide, and a guide for staff professional development. Click here ^[11] for the templates.

“Several critical success factors need to be addressed when planning and implementing student information systems and learning management systems,” said Irma Fabular, Gartner Consulting, vice president and senior managing partner for Gartner Inc.’s North American education consulting industry. “Gartner developed templates that could be leveraged as a starting point by school districts in helping to ensure successful implementation efforts.”

“There are enormous opportunities associated with leveraging SIS and LMS systems to advance student-centered learning,” said Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN. “For education technology leaders to have templates at their fingertips that provide guidance on the selection and implementation process is key for the most effective deployment and use of these technologies.”

The SIS/LMS Selection and Implementation templates and other resources available to the K-12 educational community can be found under the Resources ^[12] tab of the Closing the Gap: Turning Data into Action website at http://turningdataintoaction.org/resources ^[13]. All Closing the Gap project reports and resources are free to the K-12 educational community.

Educational data must follow students as they cross state lines, and policy makers must be equipped with the tools needed to ensure that teachers, students, and parents have access to this important information, according to two reports released by the Data Quality Campaign (DQC).

One such tool is an open-source system that lets educators pull and use data from a range of existing sources, created with support from the Dell Foundation. Another is an interstate data exchange system being used by four states.

The DQC defines student data as more than test scores—it includes attendance, course-taking, teacher information, and financial information. Data also includes any information that stakeholders need to make decisions, and that often means more than state data. Of equal importance are prekindergarten data and data from post-secondary education and the workforce.

The most useful student data include longitudinal data that follow individual students over time and across systems and sectors; actionable data that are user-friendly; and contextual data that are robust, comparable, and presented as part of a bigger picture.

“The 21st-century reality is that education does not happen in state silos,” said DQC Executive Director Aimee Guidera during a Nov. 28 panel discussion to review the reports. “Our teachers and students are mobile, but too often their data stop at the state border. It’s vital that policy makers find common-sense solutions to ensure accurate, comparable information for all education stakeholders, and states cannot do that without sharing limited and appropriate data across state lines.”

As part of its report series, the DQC focused on three high-stakes questions to highlight the importance of student data mobility:

• High school graduation rates: In 2012, roughly 80,000 students moved to a new state. If states can’t document these transfers, those students are counted as “non-graduates” and lower the graduation rate.
• Postsecondary success: Every year, approximately 400,000 high school graduates enroll as first-time freshmen at out-of-state institutions. Many students transfer institutions, adding to data complications.
• Educator preparation: California, New York, and Texas product about 48 percent of the nation’s teachers, and at least 20,000 teachers said they worked in a public school in another state the previous year.

Many states are working to build IT systems, but education leaders aren’t getting a complete picture because these IT systems are not keeping up with the fact that education crosses state lines when students transfer schools or enroll in online courses, Guidera said. Data must follow individual students and be able to be shared back and forth.

It’s important to raise awareness about multi-state student data sharing and linking to ensure that transferring students receive uninterrupted education and services, Guidera added.

“When we talk about moving data across borders of states, it’s not being done on a big scale today,” said Shawn Bay, founder of eScholar, which provides longitudinal data systems for 13 states, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and the Migrant Student Information Exchange. “That’s quite a challenge.”

Bay said a number of things are driving the interstate exchange effort, including a broad realization that personalizing education is very important; the knowledge that personalized education can only be done when all the data for each individual are integrated and available to the appropriate people; and the knowledge that sharing student data securely and in a timely manner improves the chances of success and personalization of instruction.

Challenges include matching and linking records across states accurately and in a timely manner; ensuring security, scalability, and accessibility; clarifying data exchange techniques; and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and data-sharing policies.

Bay said eScholar is working with four states on the eScholar Interstate ID eXchange ^[14] to help states share data.

“There are a lot of frustrating factors in the field of education that relate to the collection, analysis, and use of data,” said Lori Fey of the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. “The concept of moving to common education data standards is critically important.”

The foundation broadly supports a widely-adopted education data standard and financed the creation of the Ed-Fi ^[15] system, an open-source tool that lets educators pull and use data from a range of existing sources.

Constrained state and district resources have been, and continue to be, a challenge as schools strive to ensure that data follow students across state lines, Fey said, adding that the foundation has seen an “incredible wave of enthusiasm and progress” toward that goal, however.

The Georgia Department of Education struggled with identifying out-of-state and migrant students when they showed up in Georgia classrooms, said Bob Swiggum, the district’s chief information officer.

Many bemoaned the lack of a central system, but progress remained slow. “People are just naturally risk-averse; it’s just easier not to do anything that to do something,” he said.

Using a federal State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant, the state built a system that would import a new student’s records the same day that the student showed up in a new classroom. Teachers log into the state system through their local district.

This system worked with students who already resided in Georgia, but Swiggum said the state still struggled with students entering the school system from out of state. As part of that LDS grant, Georgia officials conferred with education officials from surrounding states and created the Southeast Data Exchange ^[16].

The system, which is still being developed, features a central data exchange platform that any state can use for free, and is based on 15 matching elements that will return search results when educators search for student records.

Additional details can be found in “Meeting Policymakers’ Education Responsibilities Requires Cross-State Data Collaboration, Sharing, and Comparability ^[17]” and “Limited Out-of-State Data Needed to Produce Robust Indicators ^[18].”

Schools and districts have come a long way in gathering and analyzing data to help boost student achievement, but according to a new report from the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), what school data initiatives are still missing is the human element.

The DQC’s eighth annual state analysis, Data for Action 2012, found that although states are making progress in supporting “effective data use” and  have enacted data-based policy changes, they have “not yet focused on helping people—especially parents, teachers, and students—effectively use data.” The organization issued the findings of its analysis in a report titled “Focus on People to Change Data Culture ^[19].”

“States should be commended for their hard work building robust data systems,” said Aimee Rogstad Guidera, executive director of the DQC. “But it’s time to focus on the people side of the data equation—how this benefits teachers and students. State policy makers must actively support a culture in which all education stakeholders are actually using and learning from this crucial information to improve student achievement.”

The DQC is the creator of 10 State Actions to Ensure Effective Data Use ^[20], and according to the campaign, no state has taken all of these steps yet. For example:

• States have laid the foundation to link P-20/workforce (P-20W) data systems but lack governance structures with the authority necessary to share appropriate data among agencies and departments. “This deficiency makes it nearly impossible to provide people the data they need to ensure that students stay on track for success in college and careers,” says the report.

• States are producing reports and dashboards using longitudinal data but are lagging in ensuring data access by stakeholders such as parents.

• States are increasingly providing training to help stakeholders use data but have not done enough to build the capacity of all education stakeholders to effectively use data, especially teachers.

To change the culture of education data use, the report says, states not only must create enabling state conditions, “but also determine their role in creating enabling local conditions.”

What’s also critical in proper data dissemination is promoting data ownership and trust by “building end users’ capacity to use data responsibly, and focusing on using data for continuous improvement, not to shame or blame.”

According to the report, three state-level conditions must be present to enable a data culture change: P-20W leadership, policy, and resources.

“These three conditions are necessary but insufficient to ensure a culture of effective data use,” explains the report. “Local conditions are equally important to realizing this culture change … [and states must ensure] that stakeholders have the time to review data and the authority to act on them.”

Linking P-20W data

Only six states (Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, and Texas) have met the criteria to link state longitudinal data systems across the P-20W pipeline and across state agencies, the report notes.

One challenge in completing this goal is that more cross-agency data governance bodies are currently authorized to make decisions based on voluntary or charter agreements than on legislation or executive order, which “hinders sustainability and continuity over time,” says the report.

Another challenge is that P-20W governance bodies in 22 states are not chaired by policy makers, making it difficult to garner the political will necessary to work across agencies.

Another challenge is linking K-12 data systems to special education and Head Start/Early Start programs. What’s more, match rates between K-12 and postsecondary data are below 95 percent, and only 14 states link K-12 and workforce data systems.

However, the report highlights some key questions to ensure effective data use:

• What is the quality of the data being shares across state agencies?
• Did the governance bodies start their data planning efforts with the most pressing questions from the state’s stakeholders?
• Have the data governance bodies developed all of the policies and procedures they need to guide data collection, sharing, and use?

Ensuring data access

Only five states (Arkansas, D.C., Delaware, Indiana, and New Hampshire) have met the criteria to ensure that data can be accessed, analyzed, and used by stakeholders.

One challenge to meeting this goal is that aggregate reports do not include individual student information. Also, 47 states produce high school feedback reports, but only 38 states make these reports publicly available; and states do not have benchmarks for report quality, and many reports are produced to meet compliance, rather than stakeholder, needs.

Finally, only nine states are ensuring access to student-level data for parents, as well as teachers and counselors; and many states are unclear about their role in ensuring that local stakeholders have access to data.

The report highlights these key questions to ensure effective data use:

• Do reports meet stakeholders’ needs?
• How can the state ensure that local stakeholders have access to the data they need?
• Are all stakeholders aware of the data and reports that are available?

Building capacity to use data

According to the report, only four states (Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Ohio) have met the criteria to build the capacity of all stakeholders to use longitudinal data.

One challenge is that only 16 states require data literacy for both educator certification and education preparation program approval.

Also, there is no consensus around the definition of data literacy, and states are not clear about how to differentiate data literacy among various types of educators.

And while addressing data literacy “is critical,” says the report, “conditions in schools and districts are generally not conducive to the effective use of data (e.g. principal support for data-informed decision-making, and sufficient time in the school day for collaboration around data).”

Finally, only eight states share teacher performance data with educator preparation programs, and 28 states do not share any data about educators with educators preparation programs.

The report highlights these key questions to ensure effective data use:

• What is the quality of the training that the state is providing around effective data use?
• What evidence shows the impact of educators’ data use in the classroom on student achievement?
• What is the state doing to ensure enabling conditions to promote the use of data, include but not limited to, changing the use of time and how educators work together to process and use data, identifying who has the authority to act on the data analysis, and building trust and a safe environment in which the data can be discussed and shared honestly, without fear of being blamed or shamed?

“The hardest work remains,” concludes the report, “because changing the culture in education is more difficult than building data systems. One thing is certain: we will not change the culture of education data use by focusing solely on systems or even policy. It is only by strengthening our focus on people and what they need that we will reach our goal of improving outcomes for the most important stakeholder: students.”

Many positive examples of state data achievement can be found in the report ^[19], as well as definitions of the different types of data, policy suggestions, and thought-leader questions for states.

It’s pretty common these days to hear the term “data-driven decision-making” in education and assume it is synonymous with standardized test scores. But we all know that students are more than a set of test scores. And just like there are multiple ways to assess how a student performs, there are many dimensions to education data.  New digital tools are making it possible to build personalized student learning profiles that showcase both academic and non-academic data.

I got a chance to share this idea with many of my fellow education entrepreneurs at the recent White House Education Datapalooza event on October 9, which included special guests U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, and Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education Jim Shelton. It was our honor to present and learn about products, services and applications that have immense potential for advancing education achievement.

Digital tools make it possible for schools to go beyond the traditional gradebook. Yes, well-designed quizzes and demonstrated mastery of the new Common Core State Standards matter, but data doesn’t stop there.

Of the many innovations highlighted at the Education Datapalooza, the most promising were the ones building new data sets to uncover trends and insights in student achievement. Everfi ^[21], for example, captures data about student perceptions towards personal finance through game-based assessment. Knewton ^[22]’s adaptive learning platform catches student misconceptions at a micro level as they progress through media-rich content. Gallup’s StrengthsFinder ^[23] identifies students’ intrinsic talents, helping students navigate successfully from school to career.

And with Kickboard ^[24], teachers are keeping track of other factors that were historically (and sometimes mysteriously) rolled into the overall grade on a report card – class participation, timeliness and completion of work.

Keeping track of students’ character development and learning habits – and taking into account the process and thinking behind completing a task, not just whether they got it “right” – is essential to personalizing learning.

This holistic approach has the power to shift the culture of a school. Teachers no longer operate on an island within the confines of their classroom. Applications that capture a diversity of student data points allow for more collaboration and greater visibility between teachers and strengthen schoolwide culture. Using the same platform also creates consistency among staff, using the same language and normed expectations from classroom to classroom.

The promise of technology’s ability to serve up the right piece of content at the right time to the right student is exciting. But equally powerful is the potential for technology to break to the walls that silo classrooms. In the “gradebook of the future,” information is secure yet portable, making it possible for a teacher, counselor, principal or other school community member to be in touch with how each student is progressing.

The shift to a detailed student learning profile means greater transparency between school and home.

With the right diversity of data, we have the opportunity to redefine student achievement for the 21st century and foster a truly collaborative and performance-driven culture in schools. In a data-driven school, teachers aren’t obsessed with test scores, they’re determined to build a full picture of student performance – and a plan for how to help students do even better, academically and beyond.

Jennifer Medbery is a former teacher and founder and CEO of Kickboard, a schoolwide gradebook platform that supports performance and data driven school culture by helping teachers and school leaders keep track of whole student performance including academic achievement, character development and family engagement.