U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan agreed data are important to informing policy makers.
“The focus on data, I would say, is the driving force [behind education] reform,” he said. “No longer can we guess. We need to challenge ourselves every day to see what the data mean.”
Many participants emphasized that without the collection and analysis of data, creating policy is based on guesswork.
“Accurate data are crucial to this business,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell. “This is not just people sitting over statistics. … This is about children’s lives.”
The Data Quality Campaign is a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policy makers to improve the availability and use of high-quality data to improve student achievement. The forum coincided with the Data Quality Campaign’s launch of its web site redesign.
The campaign’s new site includes an interactive map showing how much progress each state has made toward the campaign’s “10 essential elements” of a statewide longitudinal data system.
The group’s most recent survey, conducted last year, shows that six states–Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, and Utah–have implemented all 10 elements for success. These include a statewide student identifier, coordination between K-12 and higher-education data systems, and the matching of teacher to student data.
On the other hand, Montana and New York have implemented only five of the group’s recommended 10 elements, Maryland has implemented three, and Idaho has implemented only two.
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