Concurrent Session IX Presentations

Thursday, July 31, 2014
4:15 pm – 5:15 pm

IX–A: A Panel With Pennsylvania and Texas: Lessons Learned on Deploying Statewide Dashboards to Support Student Success

Sharon Gaston, Texas Education Agency
Dave Ream, Pennsylvania Department of Education
Shawn Bay, eScholar LLC

Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) have been implementing statewide dashboards to provide administrators and teachers access to information on students’ academic performance, behavioral development, attendance, assessment scores, and courses. In this session, the panelists from PDE and TEA will share their experience, best practices, and lessons learned from rolling out dashboards across their respective states.

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IX–B: Tracking the Transition From High School to Higher Education: Lessons for Successful Collaboration Between Researchers and State Partners Sharing Data

Brian Douglas and Emily House, Tennessee Higher Education Commission
Eric Rolfhus, Regional Educational Laboratory – Appalachia

The presenters will offer practical lessons for researchers wishing to collaborate with state agencies of higher education, such as how to gain buy-in for research questions, submit a successful data-request, link P–12 and postsecndary data, address National Student Clearinghouse coverage and matching issues, and work together to prepare data. Representatives of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Appalachia and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission will illustrate how researchers and state agencies can partner to examine key issues in college readiness while providing practical and tangible results to policymakers.

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Tracking the Transition From High School to Higher Education: Lessons for Successful Collaboration Between Researchers and State Partners Sharing Data (286 KB)

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IX–C: Making Sense of Graduation and Dropout Rates

Ross Santy, National Center for Education Statistics

The U.S. Department of Education currently publishes the four-year Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR), the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), and Event Dropout Rates. While each rate has its own uses and purpose, the presence of so many rates can be confusing to data users. How are ACGR and AFGR similar? How are they different? Why do graduation and dropout rates not add up to 100 percent? This session is intended as an overview of issues that affect sound use of graduation and dropout statistics.

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IX–D: Aligning the U.S. Virgin Islands’ (USVI) Early Childhood Grant With USVI’s Virgin Islands Virtual Information System (VIVIS) (CANCELLED)

Randolph Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Education
Mitch Johnson, PRE/ETS

The U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) is the only state education agency that received the Early Childhood Grant in the last round of grant funding. The USVI has organized its Early Childhood Grant within its Virgin Island Virtual Information System (VIVIS) P–20W statewide longitudinal data system (SDLS) project. Learn how the USVI has structured the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Grant to be complimentary with its self-funded SLDS project and the lessons learned on how the USVI has aligned the participating early childhood participating stakeholders.

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IX–E: The Collaborative Development of a Statewide Data Quality Network

Daniel Berger, Tuscarora Intermediate Unit (Pennsylvania)
Alison Scott, Montgomery County Intermediate Unit (Pennsylvania)
Deborah Rodrigues, Pennsylvania Department of Education

Never underestimate the power of collaboration. Learn how the 29 Intermediate Units (IUs) of Pennsylvania came together with the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) to roll out a professional learning community for all Pennsylvania local education agencies (LEAs) to grow a culture of quality data across the Commonwealth. The panelists will outline how the IUs and PDE used a combination of videoconference technology, face-to-face meetings, and collaborative agenda building to create the Data Quality Network (DQN) in Pennsylvania. Success stories and learning experiences from the first year of the DQN will be shared.

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IX–F: Empowering Parents and Communities With Publicly Reported School Performance Information

Chris Woolard, Ohio Department of Education
Jeffrey Noel, District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education
Rebecca Shah, Data Quality Campaign

Data are powerful tools for informing stakeholder decisions but won’t be used if they aren’t presented in actionable formats tailored to specific stakeholder needs. States have a responsibility to ensure that all stakeholders receive timely, actionable, and comprehensible information about the state’s public education system. Join us to learn best practices on what good public reporting looks like, understand recommendations for states, and hear from leading states on how they prioritized this work and transformed their public reporting efforts to better support all stakeholders.

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Empowering Parents and Communities With Publicly Reported School Performance Information (847 KB)

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IX–G: Using Data to Improve Students’ High School Transition to Postsecondary

Jean Osumi, Anita Huang, and Justin Katahira, University of Hawaii

If you build it, will they use it? This session will cover how Hawaii’s stakeholders are using statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) data to improve students’ transition to postsecondary education. Hawaii’s projects that use SLDS data take advantage of high school feedback reports to guide conversations about policy and student outcomes; support public high schools and postsecondary institutions working together to develop twelfth-grade “bridge” courses; use high school transcripts postsecondarily for student placement into college-level English and mathematics courses; involve a community-based organization’s use of student outcomes to plan support services; and use data to develop and benchmark strategic planning.

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Using Data to Improve Students’ High School Transition to Postsecondary (952 KB)

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IX–H: Introducing a Flexible Data Analysis Protocol for Classroom-Through-School Transformation (CANCELLED)

Elaine Hou and Khizer Husain, Two Rivers Public Charter School (District of Columbia)

Data-driven decisionmaking is the hallmark of learning organizations that strive to improve student outcomes. In this session geared towards school leaders, participants will learn about the Data Analysis Strategy Loop (DAS Loop) developed at Two Rivers Public Charter School—a protocol used to analyze data that is flexible and applicable at both the micro and macro levels of learning organizations. The presenters will guide participants through examples of how to use the protocol to make decisions from the classroom level to the charter-management level. We’ll look at how leadership can use quantitative and qualitative data to inform student interventions, accelerations, teacher evaluation, and professional development.

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IX–I: Using Common Education Standards (CEDS) to Answer Policy Questions

Beth Young and Jim Goodell, Quality Information Partners, Inc.
Julia Bloom-Weltman and Jim Campbell, AEM Corporation

What do Common Education Standards (CEDS) have to do with answering policy questions? CEDS Connect can be used to catalog policy questions, identify the data elements necessary to answer those questions, and add additional analytic notations and notes. See a demo of the Connect Tool and how to use myConnect to join policy questions with CEDS Align maps. Hear from those who have participated in the process of mapping policy questions with needed CEDS elements.

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Using Common Education Standards (CEDS) to Answer Policy Questions (3.61 MB)

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IX–J: Know Before You Go—Empowering Stakeholders With Data They Can Use to Make Better-Informed Decisions

Bill Hurwitch, Maine Department of Education

Maine provides online public outcome reports to help students, guidance counselors, and other stakeholders make well-informed decisions about college and careers. This session will focus on data available on postsecondary and workforce outcomes from the Departments of Education and Labor as well as from Maine’s public two-year and four-year college and university systems.

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Know Before You Go—Empowering Stakeholders With Data They Can Use to Make Better-Informed Decisions (1.41 MB)

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