Historically, it has been difficult for students and their families to compare how different colleges and programs improve students' chances of landing a desirable job and earning a good salary. The U.S. Department of Education's 2015 release of student earning data was a major step toward remedying this problem. The data offered by the College…

Over the past two decades, education underwent a "big data" revolution as states began tracking individual student performance and interim assessments and educational software allowed for a greater granularity of data on students, teachers, and schools. Despite this plethora of new data, considerable gaps in data on early childhood…

Administrators of distance learning courses and programs are faced with various data needs related to a range of issues; from enrollment tracking to faculty development to cost and revenue analysis. This paper will explore a proposed common data set for online program administrators and strategies for implementation. The framework offered for…

The expectation in this country is that all students should be able to succeed in school. Yet new data and accountability agendas have heightened attention to performance disparities between students with different identifiable needs--needs that stem from poverty, disability, or limited English proficiency. Educators and policymakers know that…

Phillip Henry is a semi-retired former U.K. Registrar and Secretary with almost 40 years' experience in higher education. He has been active in staff development in the United Kingdom (Association of University Administrators, Academic Registrars Council, and Association of Heads of University Administration), in the United States (AACRAO and a…

Increasingly US jobs require data science and analytics skills. Can we meet the demand? The current shortage of skills in the national job pool demonstrates that business-as-usual strategies won't satisfy the growing need. If we are to unlock the promise and potential of data and all the technologies that depend on it, employers and educators will…

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is a national statistical program that collects and compiles administrative data from SEAs covering the universe of all public elementary and secondary schools and school districts in the United States. The first CCD collection was for SY 1986-87. The predecessor to CCD was the Elementary and Secondary General…

The portfolio strategy is a change strategy for public education in a district or metropolitan area. It is founded on the idea of re-missioning government agencies from rigid bureaucratic entities that mostly manage compliance requirements and interest group politics to a new role: overseeing performance and a diverse range of school choices…

The California Children and Families Act of 1998 led to creation of the Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern) to support early childhood service programs in Kern County, the third largest county in California that spread a land area as large as the state of New Jersey. In Fiscal Year 2014-15, First 5 Kern administered more…

Better information about how investments in education are influencing outcomes for students, schools, and districts is needed. The growing hunger for using financial data to answer more and evolving questions will require changes in systems, policy, practice, and culture. The problem at hand is that both people and systems have limited capacity to…

The 2014 Thought Leaders Symposium, sponsored in part by DTZ, a UGL company, and Jacobs, focused on the issues and challenges related to leveraging campus facility assets to achieve desired institutional outcomes. More than three dozen higher education leaders--including presidents, provosts, business officers, consultants, association executives,…

This paper presents a framework informed by spatial models of politics to explain the dynamics of political competition in higher education policy and, in particular, the observed instability in the relationship between political variables and policy outcomes. To this end, I explore competing hypotheses for the relationship between government…

In fewer than 10 years, states and districts have taken bold steps to build and improve systems that collect data about students, staffing and expenditures, but the data do not often provide adequate information to guide policy and practice. Increasing amounts of data are now available to parents, educators, researchers and policymakers. However,…

The "Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006" ("Perkins IV") sets a minimum allocation requirement that secondary and postsecondary career and technical education (CTE) subgrantees must achieve to receive federal financing. An eligible recipient with an allocation below the funding threshold may obtain a…

Many school district strategic plans and education conferences are aggressively embracing technology to improve teaching and learning. Classroom technology typically includes blended learning, personalized learning, online courses for students, and professional development for teachers, among many other things. As districts wrestle with tighter…