State’s student tracking praised

Agency says data are also well-used

— Arkansas is at the national forefront in supporting the collection and use of educational data to improve student achievement, according to a new analysis by a nonprofit advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.

Arkansas and Delaware are alone among the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, in meeting nine of the 10 “actions” identified by the Data Quality Campaign as being necessary for effective use of educational data, such as student attendance, courses taken, grades, test scores and teachers.

Those actions call for the states to provide ongoing support for data systems; establish guides for data collection and use; provide timely data while protecting individual privacy; create progress reports with student-level data for educators, students and parents; and widely communicate the availability of the data.

Arkansas fell short in 2012, as it did in 2011, in having all the policies and practices necessary to ensure that educators have the ability to use data.

While Arkansas teachers and principals are trained to use data to customize instruction for their students and while data about teacher performance are shared back with their teacher education programs, the organization found that the state does not require a teacher to show competency in data literacy to qualify for a state teaching license.

And Arkansas doesn’t require data-literacy training for state approval of college and university teacher-education programs, the analysis found.

Those are the easier ones to meet, Aimee Rogstad Guidera, executive director of the Data Quality Campaign, said about the Arkansas deficiencies.

“Since we launched the campaign in 2005, Arkansas has been one of the states we’ve highlighted as being focused on leveraging power of data to improve student achievement,” Guidera said. “It’s been part of the culture in Arkansas ever since we’ve been in existence as the DQC.”

She attributed Arkansas’ standing in part to state leaders who believe in the value of collecting and using data from prekindergarten through college and the workplace, and to the policies and legislation that are in place to fund and provide access to the data systems.

“They are part of the Arkansas success story,” she said of those elements.

Karen Cushman, assistant commissioner for human resources and teacher licensure at the Arkansas Department of Education, said Friday that Arkansas is establishing new licensing requirements for new kindergarten-throughsixth-grade teachers, kindergarten-through-12th-grade special education teachers and birth-through-kindergarten teachers.

“It’s something that we will be looking at as we go through the changes in some of our licensure programs,” Cushman said of data literacy. “It’s definitely something we can look at to include. I don’t know if we will be able to do everything they want us to do” within the parameters of 120 college credit hours.

On a national basis, “every state collects quality data, but policymakers need to do more to empower education stakeholders to use data to make informed decisions,” said the organization’s eighth annual report, “Data for Action 2012.”

“Ensuring that the [information technology] infrastructure is in place to collect, analyze and present quality data is no small feat,” the report continued. “However, more important, and hard to do is to focus on the people side of the data equation. This challenge presents an opportunity for states to move beyond compliance to provide service to local stakeholders.”

Guidera said Friday that people must value and use the data, trust one another, work together and have the courage to sometimes acknowledge with colleagues and to the public that things aren’t going as well as they should. In those cases, the data would not be for the basis for “shaming and blaming” but for making improvements.

Arkansas is leading the nation in getting timely information into the hands of stakeholders, including policymakers, teachers, parents and students, she said.

“That’s that whole culture and focus from the state agency that says ‘This isn’t our data. This is the data that belongs to the people, and we need to get it back out to them.’ That’s the culture change that needs to happen in every state agency and throughout government.”

Statistics about Arkansas education are on different websites that are linked from the Arkansas Department of Education’s website: arkansased.org.

The websites include the state Department of Education Data Center, which makes statewide and district information available to the public without requiring registration or passwords. Also accessible through the agency’s website is the National Office for Research on Measurement and Evaluation Systems, or NORMS, where school and district performance reports are located.

Additional information is provided for the public on the Arkansas Research Center’s website: arc.arkansas. gov/quicklooks.

Parents and teachers can access transcripts, grades and standardized test scores of specific students through “Triand,” an electronic transcript system. Access to the Triand system is provided to parents by the schools.

Cody Decker, Arkansas Department of Education research and technology division leader, said the state agency goes so far as to collect some data from districts and other sources on a nightly basis to make the most upto-date information available to users.

At the same time, the agency is conscientious and protective of individual privacy.

“We attempt to balance the security constraints with the need to use the data for data-driven decision-making,” Decker said. “It’s a challenge ... but the strategy is to use the data [as the Data Quality Campaign says] as a flashlight and not as a hammer, and try to collect it in a timely way and ensure that it is correct and complete, and get it back in the hands of people who can make it for data-driven decision-making.”

Arkansas, Pages 15 on 11/18/2012

Upcoming Events