July 2005 — SETDA
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Making Strides with Educational Data
The Pennsylvania Department of
Education is creating a statewide
information system to support
district planning and student
achievement.
We live in a data-driven world. Marathon runners, for example, glance at their watches hundreds of times over a 26-mile course to establish and maintain a suitable pace. They also continually collect data as they run, assessing the temperature to determine if they need to remove a sweatshirt, and gauging the terrain to tailor their efforts to the hills,wind, and surface. Most importantly, all runners have a wealth of qualitative data to share about the steepest ascents on every course, the camaraderie and challenge of every race, even the cheering fans lining the courses.
In education, however, we do not believe that assessing our students yearly with statewide tests provides enough data for us to determine whether or not they are achieving—just as knowing only a marathon runner’s finish time would not convey enough information to understand and predict his current or future success. These test results are also inadequate to provide all of the information necessary to ascertain if we are educating all of our students well, or helping them succeed. Only a systemic approach to information will provide the appropriate solution.
Drowning in data. On the other hand, sometimes it feels like we are drowning in data because we cannot pay attention to all of the data available to us. The assessment and reporting provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), coupled with the law’s accountability provisions, have expanded the need for data collection, analysis, and reporting. Thus, the challenge for education in these first decades of the 21st century is to get beyond the profusion of data to knowledge, as well as focus on the indicator data most critical to our challenge of educating students.
Creating a Culture of Teaching and Learning
The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is working with local education agencies throughout the Commonwealth to create a culture of teaching and learning in every school that is student-centered, data-informed, personalized, and results-focused. Each of these elements must be supported seamlessly by systems, resources, technology, and shared leadership organized around and in support of student learning.
Transparent access to data. To meet the challenge, Pennsylvania is working on multiple systems to build more transparent access to data that leads to the development and exchange of meaningful information. Shared leadership based on common goals and communities of practice is contributing to the development of an enterprise-wide security framework and Web portal infrastructure. This portal will support the architecture for a statewide student information management system (SIMS), a comprehensive strategic planning tool and reporting system, and the Pennsylvania Educational Portal.
Focusing on indicator data.
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