data driven decision

Big data is making headlines in education, where schools and technology vendors are using it to customize the learning experience. In response to this trend, this SIIA white paper offers a comprehensive road map designed to guide data policies. It includes recommendations for empowering data-driven innovation in education, while addressing privacy concerns.

The recent public school test-cheating scandals in Atlanta and Washington D.C. are insidious not only in their impact on their own communities, but also in feeding a broadly held misperception that urban school districts are beyond salvaging.

In collaboration with AASA, The School Superintendents Association and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), Gartner, Inc., has released a series of district case studies and videos that demonstrate best practices for school districts seeking to improve student achievement through data use.

Thousands of New York parents have emailed state and city education officials in recent weeks protesting this plan to share student data with private companies — yet no parent has gotten any response. The most sensitive confidential data is being shared, including children’s names, emails, phone numbers, and photos, which will be stored along with grades, test scores, health conditions, disabilities and detailed disciplinary records.

The New Orleans educational technology startup Kickboard, which runs an internet-based service for teachers to track data on student performance, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $2 million in early stage investments from a pair of venture capital firms and several angel investors. More than 200 schools nationwide use Kickboard's service.

A recent Reuters story described a new national database of student information. Reportedly built at a cost of $100 million, and backed by prestigious non-profits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, the aim of the project is to build a standardized database of information on all students in the country, grades K through 12.

A $100 million database has been built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school. In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address, and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school - even homework completion.

Though states are making progress in supporting effective school data use, they must do more to ensure that stakeholders like teachers and parents can easily access information, according to the annual state analysis report, “Data for Action 2012,” released by the Data Quality Campaign, a nonprofit that advocates school data access for all stakeholders.

Another four school districts “scrubbed” students from their rolls and might have been awarded higher state report-card ratings than they deserved, says a state audit released this afternoon.

Canton, Cincinnati, Northridge schools in Montgomery County and Winton Woods schools in Hamilton County are the additional districts found to have systemically withdrawn then re-enrolled students who had never actually left, a process called “scrubbing.”