The Next Generation of Educational Data Systems

SHEEO 2011

Jack Buckley, Ph.D.Commissioner

National Center for Education Statisticsjack.buckley@ed.gov

Improving Postsecondary Data Systems and Quality at NCES

• Common Education Data Standards• State Longitudinal Data Systems• NCES/OPE/FSA postsecondary education

data integration efforts

Common Education Data Standards

Educators and policy makers need accurate, timely, and consistent information about students and schools in order to plan effective learning experiences, improve schools, and reduce costs.

In addition, our student population is highly mobile – across districts and states, and between K-12 and postsecondary – thus the need to share high quality data requires that we develop a common vocabulary for a core subset of data elements that exist in multiple data systems.

Why Do We Need Common Data Standards?

A national collaborative effort to develop voluntary, common data standards for a key set of variables.

CEDS elements focus on standard definitions, code sets, and technical specifications of a subset of key data elements. This will increase data interoperability, portability, and comparability across states, districts, and higher education organizations.

Voluntary Common Vocabulary

What are the standards?

CEDS Stakeholders Local Education Agencies State Education Agencies Institutions of Higher Education (public and private) State Higher Education Agencies SHEEO and CCSSO Interoperability Standards Org: PESC and SIF USDOE Program Offices: NCES, OPEPD, OET,

OUS, OPE, and FSA Associations: AACC, APLU, AIR, NAICU Foundations: Gates and MSDF Other Federal: DOL (invited)

Why is NCES involved?Data quality is essential to our mission. We believe that data quality begins at the institution level.

Common education data standards not only facilitate data exchanges between institutions, states, and the federal government but it also helps improve data quality from the ground up both when reporting to NCES (e.g., IPEDS) and in the SLDS-funded state systems.

CEDS is NOT:

Required: Adoption of any or all of the CEDS standards is entirely voluntary.

A data collection: CEDS does not collect data.

A Federal unit record system: CEDS is a model for data standardization to enable sharing between state systems.

Solely a USED undertaking: CEDS is a collaborative effort including SEAs, LEAs, state higher education organizations, institutions of higher education, and national organizations.

Version 1

• Released in September, 2010• 161 elements – focused on K-12

– Student record exchange across districts/States– Student transcripts– High school feedback reports from postsecondary to

K-12

Focus for Version 2.0?• Overall, focus will be more on postsecondary for

Version 2.0• Postsecondary different from K12

– Most institutions are private (even though most enrollments are in publics)

– Not all institutions in state systems– Different state governance and systems

• What binds them all together?

Why IPEDS?• Good for state systems

– Applies to all Title IV institutions regardless of whether in a state data system, but state systems could still adopt them and assist with data-sharing across institutions in their system (as well as with IPEDS reporting)

– IPEDS covers topics of most interest: enrollments, transfers, completions (i.e., student mobility)

• Good for institutions– NCES can use CEDS to build new tools to assist with data reporting and help

ease reporting burden– Institutions can share data, when appropriate, using a common language

• Good for project plan– Provides an achievable scope of work for Version 2.0; IPEDS is ultimately a Use

Case for CEDS but also keeps work directed and manageable• Good for aggregated data quality

– NCES is always interested in improving data quality and comparability in its data collections

– IPEDS training can provide more details to data providers and base it on CEDS, ultimately improving data quality

Example• What student-level data elements do you

need in your data system to report the IPEDS graduation rate for Asian women?– Sex– Race– Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity– GRS indicator– GRS cohort year– Exclusions flag (e.g., death)– Academic award level– Academic award date

Additional Possible Use Cases: • How do these elements link to other existing

aggregate reporting – Common Education Dataset (CDS)– Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA)– Voluntary Framework for Accountability

• How could these data possibly be used for information exchanges across institutions/state systems?– Transfer reporting?– Community college feedback report?

Next Steps/Timeline• July: First draft of elements, definitions and codesets

released for public comment• August/September: Comments reviewed and

revisions made• October: Second draft released for public comment• November/December: Comments reviewed and

revisions made • January: Version 2 released

Where to find CEDS: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/ceds/

State Longitudinal Data Systems Grants

SLDS Legislative Background• Authorized in 2002 by the Education Sciences Reform Act

and the Educational Technical Assistance Act• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of

2009 provided $250 million in SLDS funding to expand data systems to include postsecondary education and workforce information

• The grants are cooperative agreements – more active federal government involvement than in typical grants

• 3 to 5 year awards of $1.5 to $19.7 million per State• Administered by Institute of Education Sciences

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/SLDS

Eligible ApplicantsEligible applicants include the state education agencies of:

• 50 States

• District of Columbia

• Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

• United States Virgin Islands

• American Samoa

• Guam

• Northern Mariana Islands

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/SLDS

Grant Awards StatusTo date, 41 states and DC have been awarded• FY06: November 2005 – 14

grantees awarded over $52M

• FY07: June 2007 – 13 grantees

awarded over $62M

• FY09: April 2009 – 27 grantees

awarded over $150M

• FY09 ARRA: May 2010 – Fourth competition announced under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) awarded $250M to 20 states

Awards to Date:

$52M

$62 M

$150M

$250M

FY06

FY07

FY09FY09ARRA

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/SLDS

Grantee States

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/SLDS

Program Evolution

FY06, FY07 FY09 FY09 ARRA

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/SLDS

?

Postsecondary Education Data Integration Efforts

Tapping Into Department’s Own Data

• States not only ones that need to build better data systems

• ED looking within to see how we can use and organize our own data better, including administrative databases (e.g., NSLDS)

• NCES has hired dedicated staff member to build bridges between IPEDS/sample surveys and Federal Student Aid

• Goal: Breaking down the data silos

Early Successes and Next Steps• FAFSA Online now includes IPEDS data

(graduation rates, transfer rates, retention rates, average net price)

• Gainful employment analysis required NCES and FSA to merge data files so that policy analysts could use to assess impact of new regulations

• Next step: Project to build data merging tool, xwalk to merge publicly available data from IPEDS, FSA Data Center