The purpose of this document is to provide timely and useful best practice information to help education agencies understand the different uses and benefits of School Courses for the Exchange of Data (SCED). This guide was developed to provide a brief overview of SCED, highlight the research application and benefits of SCED to users, and…

State and local report cards help ensure local educational agencies (LEAs), parents, families, educators, and communities have critical data and a common framework for gauging educational progress and success. Title I, Part A (Title I) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) requires States to annually share this important…

This Special Report -- drawing on insights from a technical working group of experts in arts education, state data systems and state policy -- offers guidance on key arts-education metrics many states could track by using data they already collect.

The foundational federal law on student privacy, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), establishes student privacy rights by restricting with whom and under what circumstances schools may share students' personally identifiable information. This tool summarizes some of the main provisions of FERPA, and identifies when students'…

Improving school climate takes time and commitment from a variety of people in a variety of roles. This document outlines key action steps that noninstructional staff--including guidance counselors, social workers, school psychologists, office staff, bus drivers, maintenance and facility staff, and food service staff--can take to support school…

In recent years, education data have become both more easily accessible and more important than ever to decisions about K-12 policies and practice. Under the "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA), states are required to publish data on how students, including English Learners (ELs), are performing in areas such as reading, math, and…

This tool and its supporting resources are intended to help education leaders understand and assess equitable access data to support a root-cause analysis and, ultimately, draft a State Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators. The activities in this tool introduce metrics, address staff capacity for analyzing equitable access data,…

Technology can change higher education by empowering students to make an impact on the world as undergraduates. Done systematically, this would allow institutions to close the credibility gap with an increasingly dubious public. Authentic student achievements that are addressed to a "real world" audience can lead to richly detailed…

The Exploring Engagement Fund provides risk capital for arts nonprofits to experiment with innovative ideas about how to engage diverse Californians. In order to understand the variety of Californians engaged in arts experiences, this guide is intended to support current and future Fund grantees in collecting participant information. Exploring…

Parents expect school districts and schools to keep their children safe while they are in school. That expectation of safety and security also extends to the protection of their children's learning data. Therefore, it is critical that school districts and schools are open and transparent about their student data privacy practices, and that those…

Every state can create secure, robust linkages between early childhood and K-12 data systems, and effectively use the information from these linkages to implement initiatives to support programs and children, answer key policy questions, and be transparent about how the state's early childhood investments prepare students for success in school and…

Never before has the link between a college education and postgraduate job prospects been more important. College graduates are employed more often and, on average, earn significantly more than those without college degrees. During recent years, as students have moved into a challenging job market, a college education has remained the most…

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…

This document is the fourth and final installment of this Forum series of guides on longitudinal data systems (LDS). One goal of the National Forum on Education Statistics (the Forum) is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and program decisionmakers. An approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the…

The purpose of this guide is to empower people to more effectively use data as information. To accomplish this, the publication explains what metadata are; why metadata are critical to the development of sound education data systems; what components comprise a metadata system; what value metadata bring to data management and use; and how to…