In 2012, the Vermont Agency of Education (Agency) was awarded a Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) grant from the United States Department of Education (USDOE). The nearly $4.95 Million SLDS grant award will be used to fund the Vermont Automated Data Reporting (VADR) project. The VADR project will establish a K-12 data system that will…

This paper briefly outlines three initiatives that the University of Toronto (U of T) Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (FASE) has implemented as initial steps as the institution strives to be anti-racist and address Black inclusivity. These initiatives were based within K-12 outreach, race-based data collection and creating opportunities…

Racial equity in Canadian education remains elusive. Despite Canada's status as a multicultural nation, many minority students continue to be marginalised. In this article, we compare equity-related education policy in two Canadian provinces -- Ontario and British Columbia -- to ascertain how race and racialized students are understood in official…

How can states and schools use data to support their efforts to improve educational equity? "Building Educational Equity Indicator Systems: A Guidebook for States and School Districts," provides information to help state and school district leaders develop ways of tracking educational equity within their preK-12 systems. The guidebook…

Research reliably demonstrates that teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting students' learning and lives. Yet on myriad measures of teacher quality, students from low-income families and students of color are less likely to have equitable access to excellent teachers. States set forth their plans to address any existing…

Digital inequity has been a long-standing issue in the education community. A lack of home internet and technology devices can not only hinder students' ability to access educational resources at home, but can also have a detrimental effect on student achievement. Education agencies have taken steps over the past decades to address digital…

This Policy Snapshot defines and explores statewide longitudinal data systems, as well as relevant 2016 and 2017 legislation.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to determine how many young children and students (birth to 22 years old) were identified with visual impairments and receiving special education services in the United States. Professionals estimate at least 50% of students with visual impairments have additional disabilities and are not identified as…

English learners (ELs) represent a growing share of the student population in the United States, yet are often sidelined in federal education policy discussions. At present, an uneven approach has yielded sharp differences in ELs' educational experiences, with some states prioritizing bilingual education models and others emphasizing…

The pressure is on. Principals, expected to improve math performance at their schools, often don't know where to begin--as they may be uncomfortable with math themselves or believe that their schools are already doing all that they can. How can K-12 school leaders recognize and ensure that their school or district is supporting good math…

As state governments seek to improve the performance of institutions of K-12 and higher education, they often adopt educational policies that have similar names but different characteristics across states and with variations over time within states. Yet quantitative analyses generally examine the absence or presence of an educational policy…

Under both No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act, school leaders have been mandated to employ data-driven decision-making (DDDM) to diagnose student needs, implement targeted supports, and design school improvements. However, district administrators tasked with developing principals' DDDM capacity face a tough road. The authors…

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is urged to submit a report to the General Assembly by December 31, 2021, with information on the reviewed areas and recommendations on how to streamline the school data reporting and collecting systems of the State of Illinois. ISBE supports more than 200 software applications that were created in…

Charter school authorizing is inherently contextual work, and each charter school authorizer is the expert on their own context and portfolio of schools. This toolkit is a self-guided resource for authorizers to "identify" indicators of distress, "audit" their current data collection methods for evaluating indicators of…

The Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program was launched as an effort to address the loss of access to free and reduced-price school meals due to widespread school closures at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools reopened in a shifting mix of fully virtual, hybrid, and in-person formats and families lacked consistent access…