To improve the progression of students through the educational system and to improve education quality, California needs a robust data system that can track an individual student's progress from kindergarten to college and beyond. The authors review California's multiple existing student data systems and identify steps that could be taken toward building and maintaining an integrated student data system for the state.

Step-by-step guidance for implementing an effective statewide longitudinal data system Every U.S. state faces challenges in its efforts to ensure the highest-quality education for students. To address these challenges, a growing number of states are establishing statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDSs), a data-rich system integrating relevant data about a student's education. Implementing Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems for Education presents a detailed and contextualized discussion of SLDSs, which will serve as a recipe for states that want to implement an SLDS, develop design and enactment of new and existing SLDS systems, addressing implementation, operation and optimization. Provides a contextualized discussion of the history and purpose of SLDSs Describes how to plan for and implement an SLDS, including best practices regarding data governance, standards and privacy Discusses proven methods of data management, and details the two most popular methods of database architectures used for SLDSs Provides 5 case studies of states successfully using SLDSs Offers suggestions for expansion and inclusion of new datasets over time This essential book addresses the culture of data concept, providing a guide for states to usher in a new era in their education system where data is invaluable and used by everyone, not simply the newest version of the old system. A robust LDS initiative includes linked student records, teacher records, test scores, course selection, finances, certifications, licensure, salary and more. Concluding with a discussion of the potential future uses of SLDS, this book is the ultimate guide to SLDS implementation and understanding.

Considering research, practice, and policies on opening pathways to overcome educational disparities, this book offers new quantitative and qualitative evidence to introduce a multi-level theory on how youth navigate across the cultural worlds of their families, schools, peers, and community programs to access academic opportunities.

While the general agreement in education remains that the more senses involved in learning, the better we learn; the question still remains as to the distinction between the education of children and the education of adults. Handbook of Research on Teaching and Learning in K-20 Education provides well-rounded research in providing teaching and learning theories that can be applied to both adults and children while acknowledging the difference between both. This book serves as a comprehensive collection of expertise, research, skill, and experiences which will be useful to educators, scholars, and practitioners in the K-12 education, higher education, and adult education field.

Despite decades of substantial investments by the federal government, state governments, colleges and universities, and private foundations, students from low-income families as well as racial and ethnic minority groups continue to have substantially lower levels of postsecondary educational attainment than individuals from other groups. The State of College Access and Completion draws together leading researchers nationwide to summarize the state of college access and success and to provide recommendations for how institutional leaders and policymakers can effectively improve the entire spectrum of college access and completion. Springboarding from a seminar series organized by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, chapter authors explore what is known and not known from existing research about how to improve student success. This much-needed book calls explicit attention to the state of college access and success not only for traditional college-age students, but also for the substantial and growing number of "nontraditional" students. Describing trends in various outcomes along the pathway from college access to completion, this volume documents persisting gaps in outcomes based on students’ demographic characteristics and offers recommendations for strategies to raise student attainment. Graduate students, scholars, and researchers in higher education will find The State of College Access and Completion to be an important and timely resource.

The Education of Language Minority Immigrants in the United States draws from quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to inform educational policy and practice. It is based on cutting-edge research and policy analyses from a number of well-known experts on immigrant language minority education in the USA. The collection includes contributions on the acquisition of English, language shift, the maintenance of heritage languages, prospects for long-term educational achievement, how family background, economic status, and gender and identity influence academic adjustment and achievement, challenges for appropriate language testing and placement, and examples of advocacy action research. It concludes with a thoughtful commentary aimed at broadening our understanding of the need to provide quality immigrant language minority education within the context of globalization. This collection will be of value to students and researchers interested in promoting educational equity and achievement for immigrant language minority students.

Radically reimagine our ways of being, learning, and doing Education can be transformed if we eradicate our fixation on big data like standardized test scores as the supreme measure of equity and learning. Instead of the focus being on "fixing" and "filling" academic gaps, we must envision and rebuild the system from the student up—with classrooms, schools and systems built around students’ brilliance, cultural wealth, and intellectual potential. Street data reminds us that what is measurable is not the same as what is valuable and that data can be humanizing, liberatory and healing. By breaking down street data fundamentals: what it is, how to gather it, and how it can complement other forms of data to guide a school or district’s equity journey, Safir and Dugan offer an actionable framework for school transformation. Written for educators and policymakers, this book · Offers fresh ideas and innovative tools to apply immediately · Provides an asset-based model to help educators look for what’s right in our students and communities instead of seeking what’s wrong · Explores a different application of data, from its capacity to help us diagnose root causes of inequity, to its potential to transform learning, and its power to reshape adult culture Now is the time to take an antiracist stance, interrogate our assumptions about knowledge, measurement, and what really matters when it comes to educating young people.

The Toolbox Revisited is a data essay that follows a nationally representative cohort of students from high school into postsecondary education, and asks what aspects of their formal schooling contribute to completing a bachelor's degree by their mid-20s. The universe of students is confined to those who attended a four-year college at any time, thus including students who started out in other types of institutions, particularly community colleges.