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A general view of the California State Capitol building in Sacramento.
Credit: Kirby Lee/AP
California has long lagged behind most other states when it comes to education data systems, focusing on compliance rather than program improvement, but that could change later this year when the first phase of the Cradle-to-Career data system is expected to get underway. live.
The goals of the new statewide longitudinal data system, known as C2C, are ambitious. It links data from multiple state departments and institutions, from early learning to higher education, along with financial aid and social services. The data system is expected to provide resources for students planning for college and careers, as well as data to inform state leaders on effective education strategies.
“States need resources to help them understand how people are navigating their education and career paths,” said Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, president and CEO of the Data Quality Campaign, a national education advocacy group. “We have a responsibility to ensure that data is accessible to everyone in a timely manner.”
The first phase of the rollout later this year will be a student dashboard where anyone can view student information, including demographics. the number of homeless youth, foster children, and students with disabilities; English learner status; dropout rate, parental education level; and age of entry. The dashboard does not include information about individual students, but can be broken down by region, district and state, according to the Cradle-to-Career website.
Another dashboard will follow reporting on teacher preparation, credentialing, hiring, retention, and educator demographics. Data comes from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
“This is a very exciting moment because it immediately highlights the value of connecting this data in one place,” said Christopher Nellum, executive director of The Education Trust-West, a social justice and advocacy organization. “We will soon see the value of individual data providers sharing their data. And as a result, these two dashboards will be available online soon.”
Nellum was appointed to the C2C Management Board by Governor Gavin Newsom, but chose to be interviewed for this story as a board member of EdTrust-West.
C2C can turn countries into data leaders.
Once the Cradle-to-Career data system is built, it will have a query builder, interactive tutorials and videos, tables, reports, and research libraries. Eventually, researchers will be able to request more comprehensive data from C2C staff.
The data system is housed and managed by the California Government Operations Agency, which was established in 2013 to improve the management and accountability of government programs.
“There’s no question they can do this,” said Paige Kowalski, vice president of the Data Quality Campaign. “It’s well staffed,” she said. They have done a great job.”
The Data Quality Campaign has been critical of California in the past for its siled approach to data collection and reporting, but its leaders are optimistic about the new data system.
“I think the work the state has done on Cradle-to-Career since 2019 has been absolutely perfect and phenomenal. I can't say that for any other data effort I've seen in any state over the past 20 years. “Kowalski said.
C2C can help the state not only catch up with the rest of the country, but become a leader in linking data from early education to employment, she said.
Project cost is unclear
It's not entirely clear how much a Cradle-to-Career data system will cost. The program has spent $21.4 million to date, with an additional $10.4 million in future work that has yet to be spent, according to C2C staff.
In a planning process that began in 2019, the state allocated $2.5 million to plan the data system and an additional $100,000 to each of the 15 state departments, universities and other organizations participating in the effort. It's unclear whether all of that money was spent or some was returned to the state.
The state also increased annual funding for some state departments that provide data and other services to the Cradle-to-Career Data System, including $1.7 million to increase staff at the California Department of Education. It's unclear how many other departments have received budget increases related to C2C.
16 partners sharing data
The state has secured key players to enter into data sharing agreements with C2C. California Department of Education, California Teacher Credentialing Commission, University of California, California State University, California Community Colleges, Department of Human Services, Employment Development, Department of Education Labor Relations, Developmental Services, and private universities.
This agreement is voluntary and there are no penalties for departments or agencies that fail to provide data in a timely manner. So far, all data has been submitted on time, according to board members.
“From 2022 to now, C2C will work diligently with data providers and stakeholders to build a strong foundation to support secure data connectivity processes, given the scope of data that C2C integrates,” said Angelique Palomar, Deputy Director of Communications. “I have done it,” he said. “This includes entering into legal agreements across 16 institutions, building a data infrastructure to securely receive and integrate data between those partners, and submitting that data for the first time in October 2023.”
Palomar said the data was submitted back in March, the month the partners will share their annual data with C2C going forward.
The California Department of Education (CDE), which has lagged behind providing up-to-date data on its website for the past seven years, will contribute about 70 percent of C2C's data, according to CDE staff. Additional state funding will be used to hire more staff to help provide project data.
Bell-Ellwanger expects all partners to provide data in a timely manner.
“This data belongs to the taxpayer and not to an institution or an individual within that institution,” she said. “So all Californians deserve access to it, including researchers, journalists and the public.”
California is playing catch-up
C2C has been a long time coming. According to the Education Commission of the States, California will be one of 11 states in 2021 without a formal, connected data system across two or more of four key areas: early learning, K-12, higher education and workforce. It was one of them. .
According to Kowalski, the Kentucky Center for Statistics is the nation's gold standard for education-employment data systems. California took Kentucky into consideration when designing the California Cradle-to-Career data system, she said.
California has launched several education data systems over the past 30 years, but they have provided siled information that cannot track whether students successfully transitioned from school to work.
In the late 1980s, California began collecting school-level data through the California Basic Education Data System, known as CBEDS, a program that is still in use today.
In 1997, the state launched the California School Information Services (CSIS) system to streamline the collection and reporting of education data. But less than five years after No Child Left Behind became federal law, the system was rendered obsolete. CSIS lacked the unique identifiers for each student that new laws required to track student achievement.
In 2009, the state launched the California Longitudinal Student Achievement Data System, also known as CALPADS. According to the California Department of Education, this includes K-12 student-level demographics, enrollment, grade level, course enrollment and completion, program participation, and discipline data. Each K-12 student in California is associated with a 10-digit number, but the student's personal information is not made public.
A companion data system, the California Longitudinal Teacher Integrated Data Education System (CALTIDES), has not been implemented. The data system would have tracked educator data to facilitate monitoring assignments and evaluating programs, according to the CDE website. In June 2011, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed $2.1 million in funding that the Legislature had appropriated for CALTIDES, forcing the state to return $6 million in federal grants it had received for the new database.
“He believed that Sacramento couldn’t add much value to what the region was doing, and that data was certainly one of those things that was better left to the locals,” Kowalski said of Brown.
Instead, CALPADS was built at a baseline level and put into maintenance mode, Kowalski said. But researchers continue to work to find data that can be useful to people, she said. This is something other states have been experiencing for 10 years.
Including the public in the plan
Governor Newsom, who takes a different view from his predecessor, created the Cradle-to-Career data system as part of his gubernatorial campaign. In 2019, Congress passed the Cradle-to-Career Data System Act, which requires the creation of a data system to create support tools for teachers, parents, and students. We help institutions optimize their education, workplace, health and human services programs. Streamline financial aid administration. We conduct preliminary research to improve policies.
The state bill included public involvement in the planning process and required the public to be included in the 21-member advisory committee. According to C2C, California law mandating the data system requires it to conduct an annual survey to ensure the opinions and experiences of students and their families guide its work.
This year, C2C officials are holding community meetings across the state to discuss what information should be included in the dashboard and how that information should be displayed.
In Sacramento, community members requested data disaggregated geographically, possibly by school district. Sacramento residents also want informational videos to help educate them on how to use the dashboard. Aucklanders were interested in disaggregating their data by demographic and educational factors.
“Years ago, Governor Newsom and the California Legislature made it clear through the California Cradle-to-Career Act that they wanted this access for students, families, educators, researchers, and the public. “So I believe they are eager for this type of transparency that we are talking about and that will help build trust in that data,” Bell-Ellwanger said.