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…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the care crisis in the United States to the fore. Unprecedented closures of child care programs throughout 2020 placed a disproportionate burden on families, and mothers in particular. For parents enrolled in college or considering postsecondary enrollment at the time of the pandemic, the loss of child care services…

While home visiting services are an important component of the early childhood (EC) landscape, few states include home visiting data in their early childhood integrated data systems (ECIDS). An ECIDS links together data from different early care and education programs to generate data used to support program and policy decisions. One reason for…

When the COVID-19 pandemic drove schools online in March 2020, state education leaders were left without access to data needed to understand how best to support students. The pandemic revealed the strengths and limitations of state education data systems while inspiring new strategies for collecting, reporting and using data. In 2021, DataSmith…

State longitudinal data systems can be a powerful tool to support student success and spur equity-minded improvement throughout state education systems, but state policymakers must ensure that students' information is safe and secure. In a case study looking at Louisiana's efforts to secure student data, this profile illuminates some of the…

The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) has available for research a large data warehouse of enrollment and graduation information from 1993 to the present for nearly all postsecondary students in the United States. In this most recent academic year, 18 million currently enrolled students alone were added to the database. Some of the following…

Prior learning assessment policies allow students to earn college credit for knowledge and experience gained outside of a classroom, which can accelerate their time to graduation. Research shows that students who receive Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) credit accumulate more credit and graduate more quickly and at higher rates than their peers who…

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…

Analysis of programming process data has become popular in computing education research and educational data mining in the last decade. This type of data is quantitative, often of high temporal resolution, and it can be collected non-intrusively while the student is in a natural setting. Many levels of granularity can be obtained, such as…

This study investigates the effects of a scenario-based assessment design on students' writing processes. An experimental data set consisting of four design conditions was used in which the number of scenarios (one or two) and the placement of the essay task with respect to the lead-in tasks (first vs. last) were varied. Students' writing…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the acceptability and usability of an online training to prepare Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) educators to collect 24-hr dietary recalls using the Automated Self-Administered 24-Hour Dietary Assessment Tool (ASA24). Fifty-eight educators in 17 states were recruited to take the…

Americans share an expectation that government will serve the common good, creating inescapable pressure for public agencies--especially those that serve young children--to perform well. Yet education and human services agencies continually struggle to respond to the complex conditions in which children are born. How can they address the practical…

This publication highlights how state leaders tackle data interoperability with the emergence of data standards for student information, assessment, digital content, and other educational applications. While states are at various maturity levels for interoperability, each state shares goals for interoperability, the drivers for those goals,…

Districts across the country are facing severe shortages of teachers--especially in certain subjects (math, science, special education, career and technical education, and bilingual education) and in specific schools (urban, rural, high-poverty, high-minority, and low-achieving). The severity of the teacher shortage problem varies significantly by…

Internet-based nutrition education is becoming an important tool in serving the rural, low-income community, yet the task of creating such programming can be daunting. The authors describe the key resources used in developing an Internet-based nutrition education program for those participating in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program…