An innovative, no-cost approach to using state education data well.

  • When harnessed properly by educators, data is one of the most powerful tools to increase student achievement: with accurate information, educators can diagnose student achievement, provide corrective support and set goals for future learning.
  • Policymakers and researchers need accurate information about school performance in order to direct public funding to maximum effect.
  • Parents deserve transparency about academic improvement in their children’s schools in order to make informed choices.

The Problem

  • In 2007 the legislature allocated $6 million to create unique student identifiers for every student in the state and link them to test scores, but the State Department of Education has not publicly released this data.
  • The linked data sits idle, and the promise of unique student identifiers remains unfulfilled: parents, nonprofits, and universities still do not have access to data about growth in student achievement.
  • Because SDE does not release growth data, it is difficult to fully determine a school’s effects on student improvement.
  • Because they do not make use of this linked data, Connecticut’s high school graduation rates are unreliable, as state officials themselves acknowledge.

The Solution

  • The State Department of Education should release the linked data to nonprofit partners and universities (shielded to protect individual student privacy), and these partners can then use their own resources to make the information accessible to the public.
  • SDE’s Strategic School Profiles, currently available online, should include aggregated individual level student achievement gains.
  • Instead of letting important information about Connecticut schools sit idle, SDE should be required to make it available to researchers, at no extra cost to the department.
  • Providing universities and nonprofit organizations with the linked data would open up a universe of possible studies.
    • Researchers could study the direct effects of various reading programs on student achievement.
    • Accurate high school graduation rates would be easier to measure.
    • Longitudinal studies of student performance from kindergarten through 12th grade could shed light on intervention programs, curriculum changes, and teacher quality.
  • Projects like Trinity College and ConnCAN’s SmartChoices website can make accurate school performance data accessible to parents.