From compliance to service – a seismic shift for state education agencies
The recently released Data Quality Campaign (DQC) publication, From Compliance to Service: Evolving the State Role to Support District Data Efforts to Improve Student Achievement, gives important guidance to states and districts rushing to shift the focus of public education from compliance (i.e., a focus on getting the greatest number of kids across the lowest acceptable bar) to performance (i.e., a focus on systematic, data-driven efforts to help each student reach his or her maximum academic potential.)
The publication calls out four guiding principles for success. One, the recommendation to maximize efficiency and minimize burden in data collection, bears closer attention for two key reasons: 1) It is a foundational element missing in the education sector today; and 2) it provides the key to empowering users from classroom to statehouse with real-time, actionable information that can change student outcomes every day.
Principle 4: Maximize Efficiency and Minimize Burden
Today, schools and districts collect significant amounts of data on students and their performance – and spend significant amounts of money doing so. Some use sophisticated systems that allow for high-quality reporting, but most rely on fairly basic, single-purpose types of systems that have little payoff for real-time, on-the-ground, work in schools. Collecting data is, for example, a roughly $343 million annual undertaking in the State of Texas – that’s roughly $71 per student per year, every year – and it returns virtually no benefit to students or teachers in the classroom.
But that’s not how it has to be. Harnessing that data for educator use is possible today. The technology exists to make key data uniform and standard and to serve it up in user-friendly applications. Technologies and standards aligned with the national Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) are a means to that end and offer benefits that extend beyond a particular state or district. Ed-Fi, for one, standardizes data so it can be used for multiple purposes without costly and time-consuming efforts such as re-keying, building and maintaining special-purpose reports, or reconciling systems. This streamlined data makes it possible to realize real efficiencies: The same attendance data that gets summarized for use in school finance formulas can also give a classroom teacher reports about students with increased absences. Redundant collection efforts and storage systems are no longer necessary.
Tips for States and Districts
As states and districts move forward into performance-driven, personalized education, they’d be wise to bear a few things in mind:
- Aim higher. Don’t settle for tools with limited interoperability. Set your sights on providing more information with less effort. And demand products that are interoperable and user-friendly, and that have interfaces that are at least as visually appealing as applications you can get for free.
- Imitation is the best form…of flattery and of leverage. Use the best-in-class examples highlighted in DQC’s extensive website and the assets provided at www.ed-fi.org to speed up efforts and give educators better tools to do their jobs.
- Standardize to innovate. Align your state’s or district’s strategic technology road maps with CEDS. Innovative and time-saving reporting tools, applications and platforms based on these consistent standards are increasingly available. Your ability to quickly take advantage of the integration these products offer hinges on adoption of data standards that can serve as a translating mechanism across different systems and packages.
Those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those who are doing it. The problems of data siloes and disparate systems have plagued the sector for far too long. Ways out of the data morass are here and freely available (just ask the folks at DQC, CEDS and Ed-Fi) and widespread adoption of tools based on national standards will accelerate the development of market-based solutions that offer both better, faster, cheaper systems development, and improved data quality and reporting for the entire sector. Pioneering states and districts across the US are already doing this work and seeing the benefits. It’s time for naysayers to take another look at what’s possible.
