Even though research has shown that a college education provides enormous individual and public returns on investment, steep tuition increases and a stagnant job market have left students, families, and taxpayers wondering whether a college degree is truly worth it. Why? Although consumers have good data on the value of college degrees in general, they have very little data on the value of specContinue Reading »

The Harvard Family Research Project’s new brief, “Beyond Random Acts: Family, School, and Community Engagement as an Integral Part of Education Reform,” is a must read for both educators and policymakers. Powerfully, the brief takes on a number of important memes:

Unfortunately, many of the efforts to build student data systems exclude some of the most important stakeholders — students and their families. But, I’m encouraged by October’s Family Involvement Network of Educators newsletter, which highlights five examples of schools using data to help teachers engage parents in their child’s learning.

I loved the example from Continue Reading »

There’s a real need for healthy skepticism around our nation’s quest to collect and utilize education data to improve and deepen student learning. Complex formulas, such as those used to calculate value-added scores for teachers, need to be open to examination, testing, and improvement over time. Policymakers and educators need to better understand how to interpret and use assessmenContinue Reading »

Four years from now it will be clear that while the Race to the Top competition drove important state-level policy changes, the work of the assessment consortia will have made the most direct impact on teaching and learning. Consortia decisions will have also directed hundreds of millions in funding from a variety of other state and federal programs.

After reading the applications froContinue Reading »

If you make a few minor substitutions, Tuesday’s Washington Post article on health care reform could just as easily apply to education:

In many respects, American doctors teachers today labor much the way their counterparts did 50 years ago….They keep their records on paper in longhand….They have little idea about how their skills compare to those of fellow practitiContinue Reading »

What lessons can education policymakers learn from health care in their push to create and use data systems? Read my new commentary in Education Week. Tweet Continue Reading »

TO: Education policy wonks, pundits, bloggers, and/or twitter addicts

A little depressed and wondering what you’ll write about now that Race to the Top’s first round winners have been revealed? Sure, you could beat the various transparency/process stories to depth, begin immediate second-round speculation, or call for an even tougher second-round judging standard (crappy applContinue Reading »

Jay Matthews has a new story explaining how Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Jerry Weast is using the National Student Clearinghouse, a data repository with college-level records for 92 percent of all college students in the country, to find how graduates of his high schools perform in college:

Among the pieces of paper [Weast] unloaded during a recent visit was a bContinue Reading »

A few concluding thoughts on the excellent posts from the Smarter Data Systems series guest bloggers: