This report focuses on data governance at post-secondary institutions and related organizations. Data governance is defined as the formal execution and enforcement of authority over the management of data and data-related assets (Seiner, 2014). An overview of data governance at higher education institutions provides detail on elements of data…

"The Every Student Succeeds Act" encourages educators to use school improvement strategies backed by rigorous research. This snapshot, based on national surveys administered in 2018, describes what guidance states provided on improvement strategies and how districts selected such strategies in lowest-performing schools. Most states…

Charter school authorizing is inherently contextual work, and each charter school authorizer is the expert on their own context and portfolio of schools. This toolkit is a self-guided resource for authorizers to "identify" indicators of distress, "audit" their current data collection methods for evaluating indicators of…

This guide is designed to help State Education Agencies (SEAs) conduct self-studies to identify interventions that may be implemented in schools needing improvement or that require comprehensive or targeted support. The interventions selected should be those that are most relevant and appropriate based on the needs of schools, with the strongest…

The passage of ESSA in 2015 created a novel mandate for States to develop school accountability systems that use alternative measures of school quality beyond test scores. This created an opportunity for States to be innovative and make new forms of data available that could potentially lead to new strategies for improving schools. This study…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), originally passed in 1965, is the primary federal law related to K-12 schooling. Title I and Title II-A are core ESEA programs, and they intend to help provide all students with equal access to education by providing financial assistance to schools and districts with a high percentage of students…

Opportunity America received a grant from Lumina Foundation to conduct a national research study of community colleges' credit and noncredit occupational education programs and their relationships with employers. Opportunity America contracted with Wilder Research to manage data collection and analysis for the study. The purpose of this study was…

Although school failure and school improvement are complex challenges that look different in different contexts, patterns and trends associated with schools in distress are emerging. This brief describes the characteristics of schools when they show signs of early distress from the perspectives of school leaders and governing board members. The…

This publication describes the methods and procedures used in the 2008/12 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:08/12). These graduates, who completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree during the 2007-08 academic year, were first interviewed as part of the 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08), and then…

Animal populations are monitored over time to assess the effects of environmental disaster and disease, as well as the efficacy of laws designed to protect them. Determining the abundance of a species within a defined area is one method of monitoring a population. In "Capture" Me if You Can, middle school students will use data collected…

The Certification Data Exchange Project (CDEP) was launched in 2012 to provide a model for sharing industry-recognized credential attainment data. Increasingly, employers and education leaders are recognizing the value of industry credentials to verify the knowledge, skills and abilities that students bring to the workforce. As states take steps…

Concerns about the equitable distribution of school funding within and across school districts have led to new federal data collections on school-level expenditures. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required states to collect and report, for the first time, school-level data on both personnel and non-personnel expenditures…

This report provides AISD staff with a guide to sustain project evaluation practices on ARRA IDEA projects after grant funding ends by enhancing staff capacity to include evaluation in planning, managing, and improving the projects and programs.

This Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) annual performance report for the year 2016 describes New Jersey's accomplishments, lessons learned, challenges, and strategies New Jersey will implement to address those challenges. The cross agency RTT-ELC team has continued to implement the eleven projects that the federal partners have…

There has been little data collected on how much testing actually goes on in America's schools and how the results are used. So in the Spring of 2014, the Council staff developed and launched a survey of assessment practices. This report presents the findings from that survey and subsequent Council analysis and review of the data. It also offers…