In the Spring of 2010, the Department announced plans to issue several nonregulatory guidance documents in support of the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems effort to assist states, districts, and schools in meeting the multiple legal requirements imposed by FERPA, ESEA, and ARRA.  The objective of the guidance is to guide users in appropriately balancing the tension between the need to protect personally identifiable information in education records, and the need to meet reporting requirements and expanded education-improvement uses of the information in education records.

The guidance will address matters affecting data protections over the full data “lifecycle” of collection, storage and processing, and access, dissemination and archiving, with special emphasis on the Access and Dissemination stage.  The guidance will address three levels of activity that states will need to address—policies, procedures, and tools. The guidance will focus on data stewardship policies, electronic data security statistical methods to protect personally identifiable information from disclosure in aggregate analysis and reporting, a template for the terms of written agreements, consistent with FERPA, for permitting access to personally identifiable information from education records in conducting studies consistent with 20 U.S. C. 1232g(b)(1)(F), and training on data security, protections from unauthorized disclosures, and permissible mechanisms for facilitating data access. 

Who’s creating all these data definitions? Who’s in charge? A decade to revise race/ethnicity—a century to define teacher-of-record? During this session, two state education agency (SEA) experts will describe how they establish and manage metadata standards for their states for data collections, repositories, and outputs/reports. Two national experts will provide historical and future perspectives on how data standards (such as NCES Handbooks, SIF, EDFacts, and others) have evolved as the foundation for longitudinal data system data models. The full panel will debate the roles of LEAs, SEAs, U.S. Department of Education, vendors, and foundations in influencing and creating data standards.

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Metadata for the Common Mandate (4.52 MB)

This session will provide an update on the collection and analysis of school-by-school expenditure data required under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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Study of School-Level Expenditures (67 KB)

The New Mexico Public Education Department, Higher Education Department, and Department of Workforce Solutions have joined forces to create the “Electronic Student Management System—Carve Your Path.” This session will explain how this project provides a free, one stop shop resource of college and career exploration information to students and parents by providing a Web-based solution that is interoperable and enables students as early as sixth grade to plan their future in higher education and the workforce.

Opening Doors to New Realities? Secured Convergence of Warehouse, Reporting, Data Collections, Web Apps, and Collaboration
Jim Addy, Iowa Department of Education
Scott Gallant, Choice Solutions, Inc.
Gary Johnson, Edustructures
Richard Young, Microsoft Corporation

The Iowa Department of Education is revolutionizing information access, productivity, and student performance with an enterprise education portal. Secure and robust decentralized access management to over 60 Web-based applications big and small will be offered through a common framework, catering to everyone from student to state leader. This presentation will explain how we are addressing enterprise interoperability, identity management, and content management challenges—reducing costs, gaining efficiencies, and improving the user experience within the state education ecosystem.

EDFacts Data Quality Improvement Program—Data Quality Improvement Process and Data Governance
Barbara Timm, U.S. Department of Education

EDFacts provides data on K–12 for public reporting and decision-making.  In January 2010, the U.S. Department of Education embarked on a project to improve data quality entitled EDFacts Quality Improvement Program (EQuIP). This project provides a comprehensive look at data quality based on four cornerstones of data quality assessment, data quality improvement process, metadata repository, and data governance. At this session, we will discuss two of those cornerstones—the data quality improvement process and the data governance. The discussion of the data quality improvement process will include a discussion of data monitoring. The discussion of data governance will include discussions of data stewardship and education.

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EQuIP EDFacts Quality Improvement Program Design Considerations (251 KB)

The Death of the Export—Using Data Standards and Advanced Technology to Eliminate the Endless Export/Import Process
James Yap, Ramapo Central School District (New York)

Ramapo Central School District has harnessed the power of data standards and advanced interoperability technology to virtually eliminate the data export/import process. This has resulted in a dramatic improvement in the accuracy of data, a reduction in technology support requests, and a simplification of the state reporting process. Come hear how the seamless integration of 11 district applications has laid to rest the archaic export/import process.

The Common Data Standards (CDS) Initiative is a national, collaborative effort to eventually develop a model of voluntary, common data standards for P–20 and beyond. Participants in the initiative include representatives from states, districts, higher education organizations, and key non-profit organizations. The first release of these standards is expected in September of this year. This session will focus on the value and impact of these standards for postsecondary education and workforce data, as well as on anticipated improvements in the information feedback between all of the multiple interconnected sectors of the education enterprise.

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Nation Common Data Standard: What Does This New Initiative Mean For Postsecondary Education (456 KB)

Student privacy is an important value that is protected by federal and state laws. As the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is being revised, it is imperative that the privacy discussion addresses the broader vision of the purpose of collecting, maintaining, and using student data, which is to answer the critical policy question, “What leads to improved student achievement?” To accomplish this vision, information must be accessible to decision makers.

The Data Quality Campaign will host this session in partnership with privacy experts and leading states in the privacy field. The discussion will emphasize the continuing need and demand to answer critical policy questions through linked data systems; the ability to link systems while protecting privacy and anonymizing data; current confusions and clarifications around FERPA; preliminary analysis of federal privacy laws (including FERPA, HIPAA, COPPA, and others); and promising practices from states in sharing data while protecting student privacy. Session attendees will hear from leading states on using privacy policies, from a privacy expert from another field, and from the Data Quality Campaign.  Attendees will also receive an update on the status of the federal policy revisions.