In January 2007, the state of Florida was recognized by the Data Quality Campaign as the first state in the nation to meet the 10 elements required for building a longitudinal-data system. Since then Arkansas, Delaware and Utah have joined Florida on this list, and $52.3 million has been distributed among 14 other states to implement their own systems.
What does all this mean? We are in the early stages of the next phase of state reporting changes attributed to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Since 2001, state reporting has experienced a change from school- and district-level attendance and enrollment reports to the addition of student- and staff-level detail reports on assessment, grades, qualifications and program participation. Longitudinal-data systems are the next and most-logical and challenging step in the progression in meeting NCLB legislation.
A longitudinal student-data system will support Data Driven Decision Making (D3M) by presenting an opportunity to analyze student data at the student level. The longitudinal-data system will provide data about how each individual pre-K–12 student performs and progresses over time. It will allow state policymakers, educators and administrators to track a student’s progress from elementary school (regardless of location), to middle school, to high school and to college or some other post-secondary location.
For state reporting coordinators, the impact of this push will be similar to the one experienced with the initial enactment of NCLB. Coordinators should expect to see an expansion of the data collected, reports mandated for submission to the state and aggregation of data residing in disparate systems. In addition, coordinators will encounter a renewed effort to combat substandard data. As with any system, a longitudinal-data system is only as good as the data that resided within it. Data quality management will play an important role in determining the accuracy and usability of these new systems and ultimately the quality of the programs designed to help meet student achievement goals.
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