Data-Driven Decision-Making

This report argues that college and career readiness information should be collected and shared publicly in order to support data-driven decision making aimed at increasing student success.This report also defines the four characteristics of a successful college readiness report - transparent, thorough, timely, and tailored.

This tool provides a guide for using longitudinal student unit record data to track community college student progression by measuring educational achievements and milestone and momentum point attainments. This guide also helps researchers identify different groups of students, calculate their rates of attainment, and identify barriers to success for those groups. In addition, examples from an analysis of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges are provided. 

This report presents an overview of the higher education landscape and proposes policy reforms that would lead to innovation in the U.S. higher education system. These recommended reforms are built on four principles: focusing on outcome measures; being open to new providers of higher education; unbundling the components of higher education; and allowing for portability. The report also presents emerging innovative approaches to higher education, such as competency-based models, focused institutions, and assessments of prior learning.

This report discusses the benefits of competency education in the context of digital technology that increases personalization and customization, enabling the management of individual learning progression in a data-driven environment. The report outlines 10 capabilities of a competency-based system including flexibility in time and resources, measuring learning gains, and setting college- and career-ready expectations; and 10 design choices that inform the necessary changes in areas such as school structure, grading, and student support.

This brief describes the K-12 reforms President Obama included in the budget for 2014. These reform efforts are focused on high school redesign and career readiness; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education;  effective teaching and school leadership; school safety; school turnaround; and data systems.

This guide presents superintendents with a framework for how graduation rates can be increased at the district level. An approach that has been successful in several districts, referred to as Multiple Pathways to Graduation, is also highlighted. Districts that were able to close the graduation gap did so by: reframing the dropout conversation, analyzing the local dynamics of the graduation crisis, re-designing school and district operations to increase responsiveness, and strategicallly managing a portfolio of schools.

This fact sheet discusses the importance of aligning workforce data and how that data can inform educational and economic development policy. Aligning education, employment, and workforce data also allows stakeholders to answer a variety of questions such as: What educational experience do children need to successfully pursue their desired careers and do the courses a student takes correlate to his or her later employment and earnings?