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Data driving education policy

Published (2/4/2011)
By Kris Berggren
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Should your preschooler’s alphabet awareness be tracked by the state? How about whether you attend parent-teacher conferences or volunteer at your child’s school? Should a fourth-grade teacher’s student test scores be front page news?

Minnesota is very good at collecting educational data, two experts told the House Education Reform Committee Feb. 1, and the state’s data collection capacity is growing all the time. No action was taken.

Data collection has great potential to drive education decisions, but it’s important for policymakers to determine how information is used, by whom and for what purpose, said Cathy Wagner, director of information technologies at the Education Department, and Aimee Rogstad Guidera, executive director of Data Quality Campaign, a national nonprofit based in Minnesota.

Wagner presented plans to use a

$12.4 million grant received July 1, 2010, from the Institute of Educational Sciences to increase the department’s “interoperable” capacity to collect, analyze and report data from early childhood, P-20 Education Partnership and the departments of Labor and Industry, and Employment and Economic Development.

A 2006 grant from the institute funded the P-12 Longitudinal Data System, which stores a wealth of information about student, teacher and school performance, enrollment and demographics from preschool through secondary education.

“What is the overall goal of collecting all of this information?” said Rep. Bob Barrett (R-Shafer). Of all the factors that lead to a quality education, the two most critical are parent involvement and teacher quality, he said.

Wagner said lots of information about teacher effectiveness is being collected and new teacher assessments being designed.

Guidera said data should be used not as a “hammer,” but as a “flashlight,” to help policymakers and educators make best use of information, empower parents and help teachers improve their practice.

“For so long in education, we have collected so much information and it’s been useless,” Guidera said. She urged policymakers to “take the next step” and change the culture of how information is used to influence behavior and decisions. Otherwise, “it’s just a bunch of data sitting in a data warehouse in files over there, and it doesn’t make a difference.”

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