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The Data Quality Campaign

The Data Quality Campaign (DQC), launched in 2005, is managed by National Center for Educational Achievement (NCEA) and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the Casey Family Programs and the Lumina Foundation for Education. It is a coalition of organizations that believe that longitudinal data will assist states in establishing effective policies for better student outcomes by:

  • Determining the value added of specific schools and programs by following individual students’ academic growth;
  • Identifying consistently high-performing schools so that educators and the public can learn from best practices;
  • Evaluating the impact of teacher preparation and training programs on student achievement; and
  • Focusing school systems on preparing a higher percentage of students to succeed in rigorous high school courses, college, and challenging jobs.[1]

Many current national and state initiatives have little research to support them, because of the inability of states to collect longitudinal data efficiently to evaluate the successes and failures of these initiatives. The goals of the DQC include implementing longitudinal data systems in all 50 states by 2009, increasing understanding about how to use longitudinal data to improve student achievement, and ensuring efficient data transfer and exchange. This emphasis on the importance of collecting individual student-level data over time is shared by the National Governors Association Compact initiative.

Related Research Base

The Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002 authorizes grants from the Department of Education to State Education Agencies (SEAs) to develop and implement longitudinal data systems in order to increase data-driven decisionmaking in the school and classroom.[2] The DQC has identified 10 essential elements of a longitudinal data system:

  1. A unique statewide student identifier that connects student data across key databases across years.
  2. Student-level enrollment, demographic. and program participation information.
  3. The ability to match individual students’ test records from year to year to measure academic growth.
  4. Information on untested students and the reasons they were not tested.
  5. A teacher identifier system with the ability to match teachers to students.
  6. Student-level transcript information, including information on courses completed and grades earned.
  7. Student-level college readiness test scores.
  8. Student-level graduation and dropout data.
  9. The ability to match student records between the P–12 and higher education systems.
  10. A state data audit system assessing data quality, validity, and reliability.[3]

In 2007, DQC and NCEA conducted a survey to determine which states had built the preceding elements into their longitudinal data infrastructure. Only 10 states currently have all 10 essential elements, but a majority of states already have more than 5 elements.[4] The survey also asked members of the state boards of education to identify whether they planned to build these specific capacities, if they currently did not have them.

[1] http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/survey_results/

[2] http://nces.ed.gov/Programs/SLDS/

[3] http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/

[4] http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/survey_results/index.cfm