Purpose: This study aims to explore children's cognitions about data flows online and their understandings of algorithms, often referred to as algorithmic literacy or algorithmic folk theories, in their everyday uses of social media and YouTube. The authors focused on children ages 8 to 11, as these are the ages when most youth acquire their own…

State legislators have the opportunity to create and support legislation that positions data as a tool to help decisionmakers at all levels take action to support student success. This checklist can serve as a guide to crafting legislation that addresses education data. It applies specifically to education data legislation which includes bills…

With Governor Newsom's signature on the state budget in June 2019, California is finally on the path to joining the majority of other states in the country who have robust data systems. Having this administration provide funding to begin to build and maintain a statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) is an important win. Advocates have been…

California needs better data on the state's education systems to uncover and remedy systemic, long-standing racial and socioeconomic inequities. To create more just institutions, students, families, policymakers, educators, and advocates need access to quality, disaggregated data that allows them to answer questions about how well the state's…

Data governance is a core obligation for leaders and staff across any agency that collects, stores or uses individuals' data. It ensures that individuals' personal information is protected, and can support the continuous improvement of data quality and use, particularly when it includes well-defined processes, structure and responsibilities.…

The "Forum Guide to Data Governance" highlights how data governance programs benefit education agencies and provide timely and useful best practices, examples, and resources for agencies implementing or updating their data governance programs. This resource is intended to address the needs of federal, state, and local agencies related…

With roots in student-centered pedagogies that go back at least to the 1900s, personalized learning meets students' learning goals, needs, context, and pace while incorporating their interests and preferences. Personalized learning in today's classroom depends upon and creates an abundance of rich student data, which simultaneously fosters new…

California has long been a national and global leader in developing and maintaining quality higher education options, as well as in providing financial aid and consumer protections for Californians who access that education. However, although California's colleges and the state government do collect, receive, and report a great deal of data, these…

The issue of student retention and graduation from postsecondary institutions has grown in stature over the past decade. While the last 40 years of federal and state policies have focused largely on access to college, there is now a very real interest in not only getting students into college but also helping them earn baccalaureate and other…

The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was a multiyear effort to improve student outcomes--particularly high school graduation and college attendance among low-income minority students--by increasing student access to effective teaching. The RAND Corporation worked…

Oklahoma's Student Data Accessibility, Transparency, and Accountability Act (known as the Student DATA Act) arose just as privacy concerns about student data were beginning to surface. According to Linnette Attai, founder of education technology compliance consultancy PlayWell LLC, "When this climate of data privacy first emerged in its…

Mobile devices are increasingly upheld as powerful tools for learning and school reform. In this article, we prioritize youth voices to critically examine assumptions about student interest in mobile devices that often drive the incorporation of new technologies into schools. By demonstrating how the very meaning of mobile phones shift as they are…

The emergence of longitudinal data systems over the past decade has provided exciting opportunities to better understand students' educational trajectories over time and institutions. The stark reality for today's high school students is that some form of postsecondary education is a necessary ticket of entry to a secure economic future. This…

Institutions--even entire sectors of the education system--too often operate independently of each other, maintaining discrete student-record systems. This makes it difficult to trace a student's progress through higher education and into the workforce--and that disconnection hampers efforts to improve the system. Only by systematically collecting…

America brims with education data and these days it seems everyone in education claims to be guided by data. In this book, leaders and scholars map the landscape of data providers and users and explores why what is supplied by the former but frequently fails to meet the needs of the latter. It documents the barriers to collecting good information,…