Statewide Longitudinal

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Statewide Longitudinal
Student Data Systems Grants

• Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst
• Director
• Institute of Education Sciences
• United States Department of Education

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Institute of Education Sciences
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Mission
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Organizational Structure
Office of the Director
National Board for Education Sciences
National Center for Ed. Evaluation
National Center for Education Research
National Center for Education Statistics
National Center for Sp. Ed. Research
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IES Budget by Appropriation
Total 575.1 million
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Legislative Background

• Authorized in 2002 along with the Education
  Sciences Reform Act
• Funded in FY05 and FY06 (anticipated)
• 24.8 million in FY05 similar amount in FY06
  anticipated

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Legislative Requirements

• Competitive grants to SEAs to design, develop,
  and implement statewide longitudinal data systems
  to
• Manage individual student data to comply with
  NCLB
• Facilitate research to improve student
  achievement
• Promote linkages across states
• Protect student privacy

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Statewide longitudinal database includes

• A unique, permanent student identifier
• A data architecture that
• incorporates information needs of stakeholders
• can link records across information systems
  (e.g., to associate students with their teachers)
• links individual student records from year to
  year
• is secure
• Vertical integration of local and State data
  collections
• A data warehouse for managing longitudinal data
  and making it useful

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Why is this important?

• Valid data
• Dropouts vs. transfers
• Reporting efficiency
• Common standards, batch processing vs. hand
  counts
• Identification of promising and ineffective
  practices
• Schools that beat the odds
• Instructional improvement
• Timely reporting of student strengths and
  weaknesses
• Accountability
• Value-added

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Grant Program

• Competition announced April 15, 2005
• Applications closed June 30
• Review team met September 19-20
• Awards announced today

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The review process

• Twenty individuals with expertise in assessment
  and accountability issues
• Three types of expertise with approximately equal
  representation
• Information system management, especially with
  state databases
• Technology expertise (e.g., programming, data
  transfer, and systems development)
• Researchers who utilize large scale, longitudinal
  education databases

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The review process

• Three panel members (primary reviewers) provided
  independent written evaluations prior to the
  panel meeting
• The full panel discussed and scored each
  application as informed by the work of the
  primary reviewers
• Applications funded in rank order of panel scores
  to a cut point based on quality and available
  funds

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Outcomes of the competition

• Grants could be for up to 6 million, over a
  maximum of 3 years
• 45 SEAs applied
• Funding was sufficient to fund the top 14
  applications, with anticipated FY 2006 funds to
  be used to support out-year funding of the 14
  grants

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Grants awarded to

• Alaska
• Arkansas
• California
• Connecticut
• Florida
• Kentucky
• Maryland

• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Pennsylvania
• Ohio
• South_Carolina
• Tennessee
• Wisconsin

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Common needs

• Creating unified enterprise-wide systems -- In
  many states, there had been multiple responses to
  multiple needs, but not the time or resources to
  unify them under a single architecture that
  covered the entire enterprise

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Needs, cont.

• Linking the silos - integrating existing data
  bases so that accountability, staff, finance,
  student information systems were part of the same
  data system
• Increasing access building decision support
  systems with data warehouses that could be used
  by the SEA, districts, and schools

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Needs, cont.

• Training state and local participants to enter
  accurate, timely data and use it for
  instructional improvement
• Adopting technical standards that made it
  possible to send data district to district, or
  district to state, as efficiently and
  cost-effectively as possible

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Innovative ideas

• Integrating finance, facility, staff, student and
  accountability systems to measure, over time, the
  relationships between achievement and every
  aspect of the education environment
• Providing a guidebook for other states to use in
  developing longitudinal systems

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Innovative ideas, cont.

• Expanding an existing K-12 student information
  system into a K-20 system, integrating
  elementary-secondary and postsecondary data
• Forming partnerships beyond the K-12 community,
  with university researchers, other state agencies

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Innovative ideas, cont.

• Coordinating access to health and education
  information across state agency databases for
  researchers, policy makers, and government
  officials
• Three state collaboration to establish a common
  system building on unique strengths and
  contributions by each state

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Characteristics of winning apps.

• Clearly stated the need for the project
• Addressed each of the required components
• Demonstrated applicant teams knowledge of
  current systems
• A high quality management team
• Good plan for communication and stakeholder input
• Clear set of activities and final products
  related to goals
• Adequate budget
• Evaluation and performance measures

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Characteristics of weaker apps.

• Clarity reviewers didnt have enough
  information to judge likelihood of success
• Staff commitment SEA didnt commit enough of
  its senior staff time to manage a complex,
  large-scale project
• Resources some applications proposed good work
  but didnt convince the reviewers that the SEA
  had the infrastructure, skilled staff, or
  resources to carry it off.
• Non-responsiveness to some of the program
  requirements published in the RFA

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Characteristics of weaker apps.

• Participation the applicant didnt show
  evidence of working with the groups that had to
  be engaged
• Implementation the applicant didnt describe
  how the resulting system would be established
• Insufficient or no attention to training SEA and
  district staff
• Sustainability proposal did not address future
  funding needed to implement or maintain the system

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Plans for future grants

• If there is likely funding for FY07
• Announce competition later in calendar 06
• Award grants early in calendar 07
• 5-15 awards depending on quality and likelihood
  of continued appropriation in subsequent years
• Learn from experience with current grantees in
  how to revise and shape the application

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The Institute of Education Sciences

• The home of
• evidence-based education