A Vision and Roadmap for Education Statistics (2022) / Chapter Skim
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4 Expand Engagement and Dissemination for Greater Mission Impact
4 Expand Engagement and Dissemination for Greater Mission Impact
Pages 79-104
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From page 79... ...
; • Education practitioners, such as teachers and education administrators; • Education consumers, such as students, parents, families, and employers; • Congress and the President; • Other federal agencies, especially the principal statistical agencies; • Other data-holding agencies and organizations; • State and local policy makers and the policy community; • The civil rights-monitoring community; • Advisory boards and professional associations; and • Researchers and academia.
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From page 80... ...
NCES also produces population-level statistics on education for the nation, and the panel suggests that this core role continue. This chapter addresses methods by which NCES could increase its impact through engagement with stakeholders; incorporating user feedback into products and services; expanding its role in data governance and facilitating data access; enabling SEAs to build data-linkage infrastructure; and promoting and delivering products that are accessible, actionable, and timely.
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From page 81... ...
FIGURE 4-1 NCES stakeholders map. SOURCE: Peggy Carr, NCES, presentation at the Association of Public Data Users, October 21, 2021.
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From page 82... ...
territories, and over 13,000 school districts. The National Postsecondary Education Cooperative is charged with developing a research and development agenda focusing primarily on the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)
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RECOMMENDATION 4-1: NCES should deepen and broaden its engagement with current and potential data users, to gather continu ing feedback about their needs and ways that NCES can meet those needs more effectively. This feedback will help NCES shape its efforts to develop and disseminate standards, provide technical assistance, and strengthen its user community.
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From page 84... ...
represents a best practice.10 The ACS Office solicits feedback and questions from all users via email and phone, and it partners with the Population Reference Bureau, which hosts the ACS Data Users Group -- a community that shares information, materials, and events.11 Agencies comparable in size to NCES have developed methods for receiving broad user feedback and/or communicating directly with users via topical webinars or emails announcing product releases, for instance. NCES may consider creating a data-user advisory group to direct the Center's outreach efforts.12 NCES can also extend its use of technical review panels, such as its Technical Review Panel for IPEDS, which obtains input on IPEDS-related project plans and products and fosters communications with potential data users (RTI International, 2021)
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in the secure Federal Statistical Research Data Centers run by the U.S. Census Bureau, both fielded by the U.S.
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The U.S. Census Bureau is not the only agency engaging with other organizations to support data linkage for evidence building and innovative research.
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In the panel's opinion, NCES can and should expand its network to support creative evidence building and increase its mission impact. Receive and Use the Help of an External Review Body In addition to engaging broadly, the panel recommends that NCES routinely receive recommendations from experts and address those recommendations.
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The panel believes that NCES could benefit greatly from a review body focused solely on reinforcing NCES's strategic goals and helping the Center to meet them. RECOMMENDATION 4-3: NCES should explore and establish cre ative models for a nimble, ongoing consulting body, supplemented by a pool of ad hoc consultants, to help NCES innovate and be accountable for progress on strategic goals.
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the consulting body can assist NCES with decisions, including prioritizing and deprioritizing data collections. Importantly, the review body can validate NCES's decisions and serve as a key ally, providing reinforcement to NCES in the wake of difficult or controversial decisions.
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EXPAND NCES'S ROLE ENABLING DATA ACCESS TO SERVE AND ENGAGE STAKEHOLDERS Facilitate Data Access and Use The panel finds that NCES focuses heavily on its primary data collections and products to achieve mission impact. However, as discussed above, NCES can expand the value of existing data products by providing key services that have high return on investment of effort.
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From page 91... ...
Eventually, NCES can create a virtuous cycle, as its initial investments lead to a stronger data-governance and facilitation role in the broader education data ecosystem. Leverage NCES's Strengths to Support State and Local Education Agencies As noted throughout this study, NCES can invest internal resources to activate external resources as a force multiplier, for broader mission impact.
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LEAs need data access and technical assistance. To address these gaps, NCES could award SLDS grants for states to share data with LEAs, facilitate LEAs' access to data for evidence building, and provide technical assistance.
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Partner with External Researchers and Analysts for Evidence Building As described in the Evidence Act: • Statistical agencies are presumed to be able to access any data asset held by any executive agency for the purpose of developing evidence, with limitations.29 • Statistical agencies must expand access to their data for the pur poses of developing evidence, while also protecting the data from inappropriate access and use.30 • Statistical agencies must establish an agency-level process adhering to the Standard Application Process (established by the director of the Office of Management and Budget) so that "agencies, the Congressional Budget Office, state, local, and Tribal governments, researchers, and other individuals, as appropriate, may apply to access" data for evidence building.31 To support NCES's expanded role in data governance and evidence building, NCES can leverage its existing data-licensing program to further expand access to data while also directing and participating in research and analysis.
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. In addition to joint research, the panel feels that NCES can and should expand and modernize its data-licensing program to further increase responsible data access for evidence building.
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Such collaborations could aid NCES both by leveraging external federal resources and best practices to expand the Center's extramural research program, and by leveraging external analytic resources to expand education evidence building. 32 See IES's NAEP Secondary Analysis Grants Program awards from 2002 to 2007: https://ies.
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The latter has a simple layout and is easy to read and use, with toggles or tabs to control search options. Improving data accessibility requires thoughtful review and modernization of key resources directed at general audiences.
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From page 97... ...
For example, the Urban Institute's Education Data Portal project provides most of NCES's administrative data in API format for ready access and adds further value by harmonizing variables for easy comparison across datasets and time.37 College Navigator could possibly be run through an API, or topical searches could be addressed through an API. NCES might sponsor a hackathon or competition to promote the development of APIs, which, at the same time, could further promote NCES.
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To assist state and local school districts that have few resources for data analysis, NCES needs to deliver products that help LEAs improve their districts' schools and student outcomes. Products such as NCES's Public School District Finance Peer Search (NCES, 2021i)
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This would require NCES (or its contrac tors) to model state data with those key demographics.
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, information grouped by topic area for novice users, search engine optimization, school climate survey data Local school Tools for putting NAEP School Adding analytic and district test scores, school Profiles features, tools, administrators climate measures, or templates that and other data into provide statistical context testing for samples; links to curated resources that can serve as starting points for researching interventions; small(er) area estimates; data on teacher workforce and retention
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guidance Data Standards, Classification of Secondary School Courses, School Codes for the Exchange of Data State chiefs of Funding for states Statewide State-level liaisons education to collect and Longitudinal Data maintain statewide Systems Grant longitudinal data Program, School systems; tested, Climate Surveys vetted measures and/ or instruments that can be used at the state and local levels U.S. Department of Acquisition, International Automated scoring, Education, domestic analysis, processing, Activities Program automated item and international and maintenance (surveys combined generation, natural leaders and policy of data that allows with assessments)
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Also, the U.S. Census Bureau's Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division considers it acceptable to use peer reviewers outside of the author's branch but internal to the agency.
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Census Bureau, peer reviewers can come from other units within the agency. In the panel's opinion, NCES and IES would benefit from a careful consideration of ways to match the review process to the product, focusing on the desired outcomes of review (e.g., timely, relevant, high quality)
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