The Maine Department of Education (MDOE) wanted to better understand if their current educator workforce data collection could help them quantify supply and demand for educators in the state. They also wanted to understand if local school administrative units collected data that could inform future efforts to understand educator vacancies to…

One of the most significant issues in education, as defined by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Accountability (2018), is disproportionality in exclusionary discipline. Disproportionality is defined as the over- and under-representation of racial/ethnic minorities in relation to their overall enrollment (Ahram et al., 2011). Currently,…

It may seem obvious, but learning should never be implied or assumed. Learning must be explicit, evaluated and monitored; the impact of teaching on student learning should be visible. But how can we be sure? Armed with years of research that includes more than 2,100 meta-analyses, and 130,000 studies that include more than 300 million…

A national poll from the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), conducted by The Harris Poll, surveyed early childhood administrators--educational or child care professionals in program director or general manager roles serving children from birth through age four--to find out how they are collecting, using, and reporting data. Early childhood…

Written with faculty in mind, "Assessment by Design" is a practical resource that will also be useful to student affairs staff and administrators dedicated to using assessment to improve learning in curricular and co-curricular settings. This book presents the Cycle of Assessment as a framework that supports assessment in service of…

Student participation in summer programming can be an effective way to address students' academic and developmental needs. When well implemented and well attended, summer enrichment programs, academic programs, and employment programs have demonstrated positive outcomes for youth in areas related to program content, including academic achievement…

As federal funding for summer learning as a pandemic recovery strategy phases out, state governments face decisions about their future role in supporting students' access to quality summer learning opportunities. This brief is based on the full report, "How States Are Expanding Quality Summer Learning Opportunities," and summarizes…

Government agencies collect vast amounts of administrative data in their day-to-day activities, primarily for program operations. But the information is less often used as a research tool or fully harnessed for its evidence-building potential. This brief is the fourth in a series of publications from MDRC about the Temporary Assistance for Needy…

As a result of the growing commercial marketplace for teachers' digital data, a new organization that includes educational data brokers has evolved. Educational data brokerage is relatively intangible due to the ease of de-identified data being collected and sold via educational technology. There is an urgent need to expose how the brokerage of…

To support and better understand how to scale effectively, in 2020, the Millions Learning project at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings joined the Global Partnership for Education's (GPE) Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), a joint partnership between GPE and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), to…

The federal trust responsibility is a legal obligation, rooted in legal and political precedent, in which the U.S. government commits to protect tribal sovereignty, resources, and welfare. For Indigenous communities, there is a long history of broken promises between the U.S. and tribal governments through discriminatory policies and a lack of…

This paper explores the significance of schools' data infrastructures as a site of institutional power and (re)configuration. Using 'infrastructure studies' as a theoretical framework and drawing on in-depth studies of three contrasting Australian secondary schools, the paper takes a holistic look at schools' data infrastructures. In contrast to…

Soft or self-censorship is when librarians' modify their book choices, not based on a selection policy, but on the climate. To avoid getting in trouble, they choose books that will not be controversial. The result may be that their self-censorship is a greater threat to school libraries than the actual book challenges. In this article, Robbie…

Large amounts of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) data is created through hospitals, therapy centers, and mobile applications; however, much of this rich data does not have pre-existing classes or labels. Large amounts of data--both genetic and behavioral--that are collected as part of scientific studies or a part of treatment can provide a deeper,…

Institutions of higher education are asked to consider how their work can advance equity in institutional outcomes. Assessment, too, has been asked to consider the ways in which traditional student assessment "privileges and validates certain types of learning and evidence of learning over others" (Montenegro and Jankowski 2017, p. 5).…