Protecting Student Records and Facilitating Education Research A Workshop Summary (2009) / Chapter Skim
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3 The Value of Education Research Using Student and School Records
3 The Value of Education Research Using Student and School Records
Pages 23-36
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From page 23... ...
Second, Hannaway said, some state databases include unique teacher identifiers that allow researchers to link teacher records with student records and track patterns over time. This feature of the databases has See http://www.caldercenter.org/.
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From page 24... ...
Hannaway argued that these studies are important because they help to clarify which factors do indeed promote student achievement, which in turn has implications for cost efficiency. For example, many school districts provide higher salaries to teachers with master's degrees, but recent CALDER studies indicate that, among elementary school teachers, the presence or absence of a master's degree does not affect student learning gains.
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From page 25... ...
He asserted that it was impossible to carry out "meaningful analysis of student experiences in higher education" without longitudinal data from student records, and that the lack of such analyses limits understanding of higher education. He and other researchers would like to be able track students across higher education institutions in order to address such critical questions as whether community colleges are successful in preparing students to transfer to four-year colleges and how well elementary and secondary schools prepare students for higher education.
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From page 26... ...
Although some states and colleges are trying to improve their IT systems, many do not place a high priority on analysis of student progress. According to Bailey, members of community college boards do not understand what kinds of research could be conducted using student records and how that research might improve their educational programs.
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From page 27... ...
To measure community college outcomes more accurately, Bailey and colleagues analyzed longitudinal data on individual college students from the National Center for Education Statistics' Beginning Postsecondary Students study. They found that, although only 22.9 percent of students graduated from the institution at which they initially enrolled within three years, nearly 46 percent graduated from either their original institution or another institution after six years.
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From page 28... ...
BENEFITS OF RESEARCH ACCESS TO LONGITUDINAL STUDENT RECORD DATA Susanna Loeb (Stanford University) opened by discussing how FERPA affects university-based researchers' access to data from individual student records.
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From page 29... ...
Although school district and state personnel can often answer day-to-day questions by providing accurate, timely descriptive statistics, outside researchers are able to analyze longitudinal data in much more sophisticated ways. They conduct value-added analyses to assess how much various factors contribute to student learning over time and difference-in-difference analyses to compare patterns in two different time periods.
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From page 30... ...
However, in comparison to students not held back, these gains vanished by the time the students reached sixth grade. The third benefit of sharing student record data with outside research ers is that researchers' broad perspective allows them to address questions relevant to long-run policy.
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From page 31... ...
identified differences in the effectiveness of various teacher education programs, as measured by student achievement. The study also identified features of teacher preparation programs associated with greater gains in student
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From page 32... ...
Despite these important benefits to education agencies that share data, Loeb said, researchers often find it difficult and costly to gain access to education data sets. She asserted that the many local school districts, states, and higher education institutions that are interpreting FERPA lack clarity about how to comply.
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From page 33... ...
VALUE OF RESEARCH PARTNERSHIPS Barbara Schneider complimented the speakers, observing that CALDER was doing "the most important work on the state longitudinal databases that we have" and that no one was conducting the kinds of analyses of community college education that Bailey's group was undertaking. However, she expressed deep concern about the value and importance of education research.
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From page 34... ...
said that, although researchers involved in establishing the North Carolina Education Research Data Center developed trusting relationships with the state and school districts, the center now makes the data sets available to outside researchers, both inside and outside North Carolina. This could have drawbacks if an outside researcher conducted a weak study that would put the North Carolina Department of Education on the defensive.
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From page 35... ...
Hannaway said this had happened in Texas: John Kain, at the University of Texas at Dallas, established relationships and negotiated data-sharing agreements with the state and local school districts, which included confidentiality protections in compliance with FERPA, in the Texas Schools Project. With support from the Spencer Foundation, Kain's team compiled these and other data from multiple sources into a comprehensive longitudinal database with individually linked records on K-12 and higher education and employment outcomes (Kain, 2000)
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From page 36... ...
She said that federal statistical agencies need clear guidance on how to interpret these laws across a variety of situations, because federal agencies are often "in just as tenuous a situation as many of you" when they seek access to state or federal administrative data. Based on her monthly discussions with federal analysts studying nutrition, income, and other topics -- all of whom face similar challenges -- she suggested developing broad, systematic solutions, as well as addressing the more specific data access challenges posed by FERPA.
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