The need for a statewide educational data system

W e collect a lot of data on our students at Porterville College. When students apply, they provide a information about themselves, from their background to demographics. In addition, we keep records on everything from their coursework, degree completion, to financial aid.

Integrating all of these data sources is not easy. I am the first researcher the college ever had and prior to my being hired, much of these data existed, but were rarely viewed. What we have learned since then is that once we start using a particular source of data, people pay more attention to its accuracy. This turns out to be especially true if the state attaches funding to it.

By this point, there’s a lot I can do with our data. For example, I can tell whether a student who takes a particular course early in their educational career is more likely to be successful (hint, take math and English as soon as you can). I can tell which demographic groups we are serving better and which need help. But there’s also a lot we cannot do and one of the biggest barriers to learning more about our students and how to serve them is gaps in data collection. California, despite its long history of leadership in education, is falling behind in this area. We do not have a statewide, intersegmental data collection system.

Why intersegmental? Because that’s where the biggest gap lies. We know how we at our college are serving students, but we need information at all levels, from Kindergarten to university.

I know which high school most of our students come from, because we ask them. If it were needed, I could tell you the success rates in a particular course based on which high school students attended.

But there’s a lot we do not know. We don’t have full transcript data from the K12 system for example. There are many questions we cannot answer because of incomplete data.

This gap affects the K12 system as well as colleges. We hear from high school leaders often that they’d like to know how their students do after they leave high school and come to college. Privacy laws prevent us from providing individual student information, but where we have data, we can provide it in aggregate.

There are many research questions we could answer with a more robust system. For example, a high school might put together a new and innovative way of teaching a particular subject. They think it is working, but a better test would be how those students do in the same or similar subjects when they attend college.

And high schools don’t always have information on where their students come from either. Some unified districts may have data on their students from Kindergarten all the way through high school, but only if they attended the same district the entire time. Many move from district to district, or from a small district at the K-8 level to a larger one for high school. In cases such as these, the districts often have limited information on student performance.

Community colleges sit in the middle of the educational system. Just as we’d like to have more information on our students’ high school experiences, fouryear colleges would like more on both high schools and community colleges. And we at the CCS would like to know how our students perform once they leave us.

This is a critical gap because while we might create reforms that allow our students to progress through community college more efficiently, that does little good if they are unsuccessful at the next level. If they are failing to complete their programs or running out of financial aid eligibility, we need to know.

These days, it isn’t just educational researchers demanding a better data system. California Competes, a group of educational and business leaders advocating for reform across the state, is at the forefront of the movement.

There are the beginnings of such a system, but efforts are scattered and voluntary. CAL-PASS is such a system, an organization that collects data across the various systems and attempts to integrate it into a usable system. They also provide reports on a handful of topics.

Programs such as these are important and they provide a start, but we need a more coordinated movement.

There are barriers to a data system, to be sure. Privacy rules, security, and the lack of a statewide identification are among them. But other states have been successful in overcoming these obstacles. Certainly, California can as well. Michael Carley is a resident of Porterville. He can be reached at mcarley@gmail.com.