"Using Education Indicators: A Forum Guide for State and Local Education Agencies" was developed to provide timely and useful information on education indicators, how their collection and use have changed over time, and how agencies use them strategically. Since the publication of the 2005 document "Forum Guide to Education…

With the recent reauthorization of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), unprecedented philanthropic investment in career pathways, and the urgent economic needs of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, the career readiness field is at a critical moment in time. To meet this moment, states,…

Research has shown that mathematical proficiency gaps are related to students' and schools' indicators of poverty, with fewer studies on neighborhood effects on achievement gaps. Although this literature has accounted for students' nesting within schools, so far, methodological constraints have not allowed researchers to formally account for…

Recent federal policy changes have placed new requirements on states to demonstrate and document their efforts to improve access to high-quality early care and education (ECE), and have made clear the urgent need for a shared understanding of this concept. This guidebook was developed to address the need for developing a common understanding and…

Reviews of research in special education have a unique place in the scientific literature, with the potential to inform a broad audience about the effectiveness and acceptability of assessment and intervention strategies for a heterogeneous group of children and youth. Results from reviews are useful to school leaders, practitioners, parents,…

Education data are growing in quantity, quality, and value. When appropriately used to guide action, data can be a powerful tool for improving school operations, teaching, and learning. Education stakeholders who possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to appropriately access, analyze, and interpret data will be able to use data to take…

Districts now have access to a wealth of new information that can help target students with appropriate supports and bring focus and coherence to college readiness efforts. However, the abundance of data has brought its own challenges. Schools and school systems are often overwhelmed with the amount of data available. The capacity of districts to…

This chapter presents a sophisticated approach for tracking student cohorts from entry through departure within an institution. It describes how a researcher can create a student tracking model to perform longitudinal research on student cohorts. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Effective evidence-based action requires getting the right data into the right hands at the right time to help make decisions. The Data Quality Campaign (2011) has provided suggestions to state education agencies for effectively using data within state longitudinal data systems. One suggestion is to identify "the variety of ways available…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

Many organizations and agencies collect data related to postsecondary education. To improve the coordination of data definitions and surveys, guidelines have been prepared to define the best survey practices for data collectors and data providers. The first section of this document, "Best Practices for Data Collectors," covers the…

Indicators of mathematics and science education progress are important to policymakers and the public in order to evaluate the quality of education. Recent reports have evaluated existing indicators and suggested core aspects of mathematics and science education that an indicator system should evaluate. This note discusses two fundamental aspects…

A rationale for school-based evaluation, criteria for a sensible evaluation and assessment system, and a systematic process for implementing an evaluation and assessment system are presented. School-based evaluation can be used as a management tool and a means of improving aspects of teaching. Sensible evaluation must be aligned with school goals,…

When studying different types of returns to education, educational reforms are commonly used in the economics literature as a source of exogenous variation in education. The Swedish compulsory school reform is one example; the reform extended compulsory education throughout the country, in different municipalities at different points in time. Such…

The National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) is a cooperative of state, local, and federal education agencies. The goal of Forum activities is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and programmatic decision-makers. One approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the collective experiences of Forum…