"The Forum Guide to Strategies for Education Data Collection and Reporting (SEDCAR)" was created to provide timely and useful best practices for education agencies that are interested in designing and implementing a strategy for data collection and reporting, focusing on these as key elements of the larger data process. It builds upon…

In recent years, career and technical education (CTE) programs that include quality work-based learning (WBL) opportunities for students have gained significant traction among educators, policymakers, and stakeholders as an effective way to prepare students for the labor market. However, a lack of data on WBL--which many CTE students participate…

While many campuses have access to and publish equity-focused data, it can be difficult to share that data with the campus community in a way that engages multiple offices. This article outlines the Equity Liaison Initiative at the University of Wisconsin--La Crosse, which engages individuals from most offices on campus with equity-focused data to…

Prioritizing social, emotional, and behavioral supports is essential for student success. By establishing systems to support students' social (how they interact), emotional (how they feel), and behavioral (how they act) needs and growth, educators and leaders can ensure that all students have full access to instruction and the essential skills for…

Data modernization and security practices allow educational leaders to provide accurate, secure, and timely data that can be securely exchanged, shared, and connected in order to provide instant understanding of school performance, student attendance, academic performance, or funding from multiple sources. This matters because: (1) Data…

Over the last decade, state efforts to build stronger data infrastructure and integrate data about early childhood services have continued to grow. A stronger data infrastructure supports states in more easily linking data across programs, which in turn makes it easier to analyze and use that data to answer important policy questions. An Early…

This is the third in a series of five briefs published by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology on the key considerations facing educational leaders as they work to build and sustain core digital infrastructure for learning. These briefs offer recommendations to complement the fundamental infrastructure considerations…

This chapter explores how the Wisconsin Technical College System Student Success Center and the Success Center for Ohio Community Colleges provided support that encouraged data-informed decision-making among 2-year college stakeholders. A case study for each Center is presented to illustrate data-related strategies and lessons learned. The…

Data systems are becoming powerful tools to address students' diverse and changing needs, but without comprehensive data privacy policies, the risks of unintentional or malicious disclosures of students' private information is increasing. Given the mounting challenges to protect data privacy, Education Commission of the States assembled data…

Participating in the growing scholarly attention to the roles of rhetoric and argumentation in policymaking, we examine how the use of research evidence operates in explicitly argumentative legislative hearings characterised by partisanship and polarisation. Conducting a rhetorical analysis of three legislative hearings in the US state of…

Most districts help teachers use data to improve student learning, often supporting this effort with federal funds. But many teachers feel unprepared to use student data to inform their instruction -- referred to as data-driven instruction (DDI) -- and there is little evidence of whether it improves student achievement. This report assesses an…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation and impacts of the Building Assets, Reducing Risks (BARR) model in its first year of implementation in 66 schools across the U.S. and to document scale-up progress during the Investing in Innovation (i3) grant period (2017-2021). The impact evaluation included 21,529 9th grade students…

High-stakes, standardized testing plays an important role in the lives of many students as they apply to college and compete for scholarships. In states where college readiness measures, like the ACT® test, are used for school and district accountability, the ACT scores of all students, whether college-bound or not, are a top priority for school…

This evaluation brief describes how Wisconsin is implementing an equitable multi-level system of supports (MLSS) framework, also known as a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS), and how schools implementing this framework with both a behavior and reading focus have shown positive outcomes for all students. The data analyzed in this brief were…