Goal, Process & Components

Policy Recommendation

Survey Questions to Ask

Case Studies

Supporting Research

Leadership Documents

Policy Makers

Teachers & Administrators

Parents & Community Leaders

Next Steps

Tool Participants

Goal, Process & Components

Goal
To provide effective and useful tools for state educational technology directors that assist them in leveraging the data being collected for federal reporting purposes to improve teaching and learning at the school and student levels.

Process
A working group of 17 state level educators, data experts from national organizations including State Interoperabililty Framework (SIF) and the Council of Chief State School Officers, as well as executives from Education Testing Services (ETS) convened at the SETDA Leadership Summit in October 2005. The purpose of this three hour in-depth session was to provide leadership and direction regarding the content of the “Using Data for School Reform” chapter.

Upon completion of the direction setting, subsets of the larger group along with experts from National Center for Education Accountability (NCEA) and educational research professionals met monthly via conference call and through consistent Web collaboration to refine the documents, messaging, and audiences that are in this tool.

Components
This chapter includes four major components:

1. A policy recommendation for the reauthorization of NCLB and state level approaches to funding statewide data systems.
   
   
2. Sample survey questions that begin to analyze a state’s capacity to leverage the data being collected for the improvement of teaching and learning instead of addressing the technical parameters of the system.
   
   
3. Independent research and case studies that support the work above.
   
   
4. Specific leadership documents and sample templates targeted to three different audiences (policy makers, teachers & administrators, and parents & community leaders) that help state level educators explain why statewide data systems are so important to the success of schools today.

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