All students deserve a great education, one that affords them every opportunity to grow into knowledgeable and successful adults. To make this vision a reality, students, parents, educators, and policymakers must have access to the right information to make decisions and support student learning. The Data Quality Campaign's Four Policy Priorities…

Teachers need longitudinal student-level data, such as attendance history, course-taking patterns, grades, and test scores, to tailor instruction to individual students' strengths and weaknesses. This factsheet uses the findings from the "Data for Action 2013" analysis to discuss how states can provide teachers with student-level…

Every state can create secure, robust linkages between early childhood and K-12 data systems, and effectively use the information from these linkages to implement initiatives to support programs and children, answer key policy questions, and be transparent about how the state's early childhood investments prepare students for success in school and…

Over the last five years, states have made significant progress implementing statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS) to collect, store, link and share student-level data. States and the many national organizations supporting their efforts recognized that while building and using these indispensable data systems are important for policy,…

Faced with the need to create a competitive workforce and improve the quality of our education system, states are pursuing policy agendas to better prepare students for postsecondary education and careers. To inform these agendas, statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDSs) have become an invaluable asset and serve as a tool to help states answer…

As state policymakers strive to ensure that every student is taught by an effective teacher and is ready for college and 21st-century careers, they must also make drastic budget cuts. States cannot do more with less without collecting and using quality data to determine which programs and policies increase student achievement and the state's…

Data are only useful if people are able to access, understand and use them. Without access to the right information, stakeholders are forced to make decisions based on anecdote, experience or instinct. For information to be useful, it must be timely, readily available, and easy to understand. This brief highlights the importance of implementing…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides an opportunity to produce high quality postsecondary indicators and, as available, publicly report them in ways that inform, engage, and empower communities. As first "required" in 2009's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus law, almost every state has linked its K-12 and…

Data are most useful when they are transformed into actionable information that people are able to access, understand and use. Thanks to both state and federal leadership, political commitment and investment of financial resources, states have made tremendous progress in the building of statewide K-12 longitudinal data systems. However, to ensure…

District superintendents or school principals need to be able to access and use high-quality data to make good decisions. Often this data is collected and stored locally, but information that is publicly reported by the state can provide additional value. Although public reporting in a few states is designed to serve information needs, states'…

This report presents survey results of the 10 State Actions including status of all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These State Actions include: (1) Link P-20/workforce data systems; (2) Create stable, sustained support for robust state longitudinal data systems; (3) Develop governance structures to guide data collection,…

State education data systems have often been described as data rich but information poor. Historically, these systems were created for compliance purposes and, therefore, designed and managed as information technology projects, but a culture change is under way. Educators and other stakeholders are beginning to value data as a tool to inform…

States have responsibilities to ensure that transferring students receive uninterrupted education and services, produce indicators that provide a complete picture, and ensure that information is comparable across states. However, states' and districts' ability to meet these responsibilities requires data capacity that can be undermined due to…

The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policymakers to improve the collection, availability and use of high-quality education data and to implement state longitudinal data systems to improve student achievement. The campaign aims to provide tools and resources that will assist state…

There is an increasing focus at the state and federal levels on linking data across the P-20/Workforce spectrum to help inform policies and practices. This primer is intended to provide policymakers with: (1) An overview of the status of states vis-a-vis the linking of postsecondary data to K-12 and workforce data; (2) A subset of questions…