Help California Design its State Longitudinal Data System!
As we shared in a previous blog post, California is building a longitudinal education data system with the goal of leveraging educational, workforce, and eventually social service information to address disparities in educational opportunities and improve outcomes for all students. But did you know that you have the opportunity to observe and participate in the creation of the system itself?
Recommendations for how the Cradle-to-Career Data System should be structured and managed are being created by a Workgroup and various Advisory Groups and subcommittees through a series of public meetings. You can learn more about those groups here, including information about when future meetings will be held, as well as read the research agenda that has been proposed to guide the system.
Among the questions the groups are faced with are determining how the system should be managed and what kind of entity should govern it. These questions are important because the entity responsible for managing this data system will ultimately be in charge of deciding how the data is used and how much of it is made public. One proposal discussed at a recent Workgroup and Policy and Analytics Advisory Group meeting would have the system be governed and managed by the colleges and state agencies that contribute data into it, giving them the ultimate power to make decisions about the use of data. TICAS and others voiced concerns that current proposals may be too closely tied to data contributors, and that more independence would ultimately benefit the quality and responsiveness of the system in the long run.
These issues and others will be discussed at upcoming “Homework Team” meetings, which have been scheduled by group facilitator WestEd to allow for additional discussion and public participation as these decisions are made. The first meeting is scheduled for September 17, and the second is scheduled for September 21. Both are open to the public, and we urge anyone interested in data and equitable education outcomes to tune in and share their input through public comment. If you have questions, you can reach out to TICAS Senior Policy Analyst Angela Perry at APerry@TICAS.org.
