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THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT / THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK / ALBANY, NY 12234

TO:	The Honorable the Members of the Board of Regents
FROM:	Theresa E. Savo
SUBJECT:	Statewide Student Data System
DATE:	June 1, 2005
STRATEGIC GOAL:	Goals 1 and 2
AUTHORIZATION(S):

Executive Summary

Issue for Discussion

The State Education Department (SED) is developing a statewide student data system designed to reduce the local burden of data collection, provide basic data analysis tools to local educational agencies and provide a consistent and widely understood approach for collecting, storing, analyzing and using data about students. Such a system will give teachers and administrators access to analyses of assessment results. It is also intended to meet State and Federal accountability requirements.

Reason(s) for Consideration

Required by Federal statute and regulation, and State statute and regulation.

Proposed Handling

Further update on the implementation of a statewide unique identifier system and the individual student record system will be presented at the November 2005 and June 2006 Full Board meetings.

Procedural History

This is a Full Board update to the June 2004 presentation on the implementation of a statewide unique identifier system and the individual student record system.

Background Information

SED lacks sufficient data needed to fully inform policy related to programs, curriculum and instruction, and resource allocation at the Federal, State, and local levels. Moreover, SED and school districts lack sufficient data to examine the relationships among resource, demographic, and student performance measures and to assess these relationships across time or for highly mobile students.

In the 1997-1998 school year, SED began electronic collection of individual student records at the elementary and middle levels through the Local Education Agency Program (LEAP) data collection system. The records include data on race/ethnicity, disability status, gender, income status, English proficiency, and migrant status. LEAP annually collects data on approximately 600,000 students in grades 4, 5 and 8. Beginning in 2003-2004, on limited English proficient students in grades K-8.

Beginning with the 2001-2002 school year, SED implemented the System for Tracking Education Progress (STEP) to collect unit record data for students in grades 9-12. STEP collects demographic and program participation data, State assessment scores, dropout and graduation data. STEP annually collects data on approximately one million students.

Through the LEAP and STEP systems, SED has records for all students in grades 4, 5, and 8 beginning with the 1998-1999 school year and all students in grades 9-12 beginning with the 2001-2002 school year. These records allow SED to meet the requirements of the State and Federal accountability systems, including the aggregation of data by race/ethnicity, disability status, English proficiency, and income status.

Concurrent with the work at SED outlined above, the 12 Regional Information Centers (RICs), located at BOCES, have implemented data repositories (called ‘data warehouses’) that collect individual student data. These repositories enhance the ability of school districts to meet local district data analysis needs, and improve the ability of the districts to meet State data collection requirements specified in the LEAP and STEP systems. The RICs have collected individual records for approximately 685,000 unique students from 350 participating school districts, including the cities of Buffalo and Rochester.

The work of the RICs, along with the best practices identified in other states, provided the necessary background for SED to identify data warehousing, along with a system of unique statewide identifiers as an appropriate foundation for the statewide student data system. Therefore, in 2004, SED purchased a software license for a statewide data warehouse and is working with school districts, including the Big 5 City districts, to expand the RIC data warehouses to include all districts. In 2004, SED also built the necessary computer program and system for creation and application of unique student identification numbers, and began to implement the system to assign statewide unique student identifiers in March 2005. We will complete assigning identifiers to currently enrolled students by December 2005.

SED will contract with the Western New York RIC to maintain a single statewide repository of individual student data which will co-locate the data maintained in the existing RIC-based data warehouses and the warehouses that will house data for New York City Department of Education, Yonkers and Syracuse. Staff determined that a single repository would provide greater efficiency, consistency and ease of use than implementing three regional repositories as was described in the June 2004 proposal. The single statewide repository will be fully populated with student data by August 2006 providing data from the 2005-2006 school year. SED has also purchased a standardized software system from which summary reports and analytical reports will be developed on the grade-by-grade testing program as well as other data. Other work currently in process:

· Staff are developing plans with the New York City Department of Education to implement a data warehouse solution dedicated to New York City’s public schools.

· SED will contract with an outside vendor to provide a series of baseline reports and analyses on student, building and district performance. These reports will be web-based and will be available to all districts. The reporting program will also include individual and summary reports on the results of the grades 3-8 Math and English Language Arts testing program.

· Student records collected with the STEP and LEAP systems for school year 2004-2005 will be connected to a statewide unique student identifier. These collections occur during the summer and fall, 2005.

· By August 2006, all school districts will be using the data warehouses to store individual student records and hold the statewide unique student identifier.

Major challenges:

· Ensure there is sufficient district support for the creation, maintenance and use of high-quality data.

· Concerns among school district personnel and parents regarding the protection of student privacy and confidentiality.

Recommendation

N/A

Timetable for Implementation

· The single statewide repository will be fully populated with student data by August 2006 providing data from the 2005-2006 school year.