Everyone who uses student information has a responsibility to maintain students' privacy and the security of their data. Ensuring student data privacy is about so much more than complying with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). While privacy must be top of mind when thinking about collecting and using personally identifiable…

This article characterizes and reflects on the possible uses of early warning systems (hereafter, EWS) in the region as effective tools to support educational pathways, whenever they identify risks of dropout, difficulties for the achievement of substantive learning, and the possibility of organizing specific actions. This article was developed in…

The American College Personnel Association recognized the increased prominence of digital technologies in student affairs work, developing a technology competency area that includes foundational, intermediate, and advanced objectives for data use. However, as the role of technology use in student affairs practice rapidly changes, it is…

Data infrastructures are suffused with stories of their past, present, and future that govern their use. This article draws on research into 'OneSchool', the state schooling data infrastructure used to manage student data in Queensland, Australia. The political, social, and technical histories of OneSchool's development are shown to govern its…

Research and evidence on education from 33 countries in Africa reflects rich diversity andunderscores the importance of tailoring solutions to the local context. Through this research, three key actions on education emerge as points of leverage for the continent: (1) Use local education data to make informed decisions that address country-specific…

Education systems are complex and involve many diverse actors. In order to have an impact on children's outcomes, policies and programmes must take on this complexity. Most education interventions are centrally designed, yet, in increasingly decentralized systems, they need to be adopted -- and often undergo adaptation -- at multiple levels of…

This paper uses the notion of the data-doppelganger as a theoretical lens through which to view the datafication of education. The data-doppelganger is the version of the self which exists in the significant quantities of data collected about both children and teachers. A psychoanalytic analysis of the literary genre of the doppelganger identifies…

Child Trends and Start Early have partnered to better understand what early childhood systems builders need to build and support more equitable systems. The briefs in this series, called Conversation Starters, define a new framework for early childhood systems that center families' experiences and raise key considerations and next steps for…

The School Spending & Outcomes Snapshot allows users to view and print data visualizations to explore spending and outcomes data in order to foster thoughtful conversations to improve equity and outcomes in their schools communities.

Robust partnerships between state chief academic officers (SAOs) and institutional chief academic officers (CAOs) align administrative procedures and foster a shared vision for student achievement that leverages the benefits of state and institutional coordination. This report outlines how four states--Louisiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, and…

School self-evaluation (SSE) has emerged as a widely used approach to school evaluation in recent decades. This has occurred in the context of what is referred to as "New Public Management," an element of which seeks to empower public institutions to make decisions locally about improving their processes and standards. Inspection regimes…

Data collected from across the child care and early education (CCEE) field, both during and prior to COVID-19, have been critical in helping policymakers identify and scale public resources to meet the increasing needs of children, families, early educators, and providers. Much of the data collected throughout the global health crisis has shown…

This knowledge brief is part of a continuing series designed to inform California education leaders about new research findings on key state policy topics. It summarizes recent findings on improving the access to, and the use of, teacher workforce data in California, and focuses on the importance of instituting a statewide teacher data system that…

The Partnership for College Completion (PCC) was founded to "advance equity in higher education" by supporting colleges and universities to improve college completion for Black, Latinx, and Pell-eligible students--those groups that experience persistent disparities in completion. Simultaneously, PCC engages in state policy reform to…

This qualitative case study examines how board members make sense of federal accountability policies and how their sensemaking shapes their use of assessment data as a policy instrument. Deviating from previous work on practitioner sensemaking, the participants' interpretations of assessments did not align with their ensuing use of the data.…