Data Quality Campaign | Home

Data Quality Campaign | Home

 2009-10 Survey Results by State

States have made remarkable progress in developing longitudinal data systems that can follow student progress over time, from early childhood through 12th grade and into postsecondary education through implementation of the 10 Essential Elements. The 10 State Actions are the fundamental steps states must put in place to change the culture around how data are used to inform decisions to improve system and student performance. The maps below show how many of the 10 Essential Elements and 10 State Actions each state reports having based on responses to the 2009-10 DQC survey of states.

• Essential Elements
• State Actions

Rollover a state map to see which Essential Elements a state has in place based on 2009-10 survey responses.

Click a state to go to it, or choose from the menu: Go to state Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming 

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Looking for Your School's Data?

We recommend the following sources: School Data Direct Ed Facts Great Schools

Don't Let Ex-Gay Propaganda in Public Schools | Gay Rights | Change.org

Don't Let Ex-Gay Propaganda in Public Schools | Gay Rights | Change.org

Don't Let Ex-Gay Propaganda in Public Schools

Targeting: Patricia O'Neill (President, Board of Education) and Dr. Jerry Weast (Superintendent of Schools)

Started by: Michael Jones

This past week, hundreds of students in the Montgomery County Public School system were given fliers by an ex-gay organization. That organization - Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) - believes that people choose to be gay and that homosexuality is destructive. They regularly counsel people to convert their sexual orientation from gay to straight, and suggest inaccurately that science supports the notion that homosexuality is not biological.

Why are public school students receiving handouts from an organization like this? The President of the Montgomery County Public School board even went on record to say that the PFOX fliers "are probably counter to what is available in our health curriculum." So why give students information that defy what you teach them in class?

Furthermore, these fliers are intended to tell LGBT people, particularly LGBT youth, that they can change their sexual orientation. That is a damaging message to send to queer youth. Tell the Montgomery County Public School District that fliers like this don't deserve an official endorsement from the school.

• Report

The Educated Guess The Educated Guess Study math to be an Olympian

The Educated Guess

Study math to be an Olympian

Posted in Program innovation

Knowledge of science and math can make you the next Olympian. At that’s what I would tell any 12-year-old with dreams of bringing home the gold at Sochi, Korea, in 2014.
You, young Sidney Crosby: See why slamming the ice with your stick an instant before you strike the puck adds speed to your slap shot.
Hey, aspiring Kim Yu-na: Study the law of conservation of angular momentum and centripetal force to make you a whirling dervish with a triple toe loop.
Shaun White wanna-be: Learn the physics of angular momentum, drag and torque before you even think about imitating that gravity- and death-defying Double McTwist 1260.
And you, their teachers: Inspire them by going  to Lessonopoly to watch videos on the physics behind Olympic sports and download some hands-on experiments to reinforce what students are watching.
(Read more and comment on this post)

Schools Matter: Anti-Gay Group Spreads Propaganda - When Education is Misinformation

Schools Matter: Anti-Gay Group Spreads Propaganda - When Education is Misinformation

Anti-Gay Group Spreads Propaganda - When Education is Misinformation

If you're a student in the Montgomery Public Schools, chances are your recent report card was accompanied by a pamphlet created by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), a religiously-based anti-gay group that "educates the public on sexual orientation." Their version of "education" and "sexual orientation" is almost entirely Biblically-based: no matter how you view their materials, it's awfully clear that LGBT = bad. This does not create a safe and welcoming environment for MPS students.

It is entirely legal for PFOX to distribute their materials through the schools, but it raises serious questions: should schools distribute materials that are considered offensive to particular communities? PFOX's message clearly contradicts the lessons taught in MPS health classes - is that really okay? Does MPS distributing the material make it look like the public schools support such a stance?

Sign a petition here to let the Montgomery County Public Schools know this kind or propaganda not only deceives our children, but it sends a terrible message to the LGBT

Think before you speak. Don't say "That's So Gay.":

Education Sector: Analysis and Perspectives: The 411 on Cohort Default Rates

Education Sector: Analysis and Perspectives: The 411 on Cohort Default Rates

Each year, the federal government spends billions of dollars to provide grants and loans to college students. To ensure that these funds are not wasted, the federal government has developed an accountability metric known as the cohort default rate (CDR). CDRs, or the percentage of borrowers who default on their student loans within two years of graduating or dropping out, are calculated annually for every college and university that participates in the federal student aid program. While these rates have been used for years, the U.S. Department of Education recently released a new set of CDRs that provide better information about the longer-term borrowing prospects for students at individual schools. In this presentation, Policy Analyst Ben Miller explains the ins and outs of cohort default rates and why the new rates have important implications for students, parents, and schools.

Cohort default rate data are an important measure for parents and students to know, Miller argues. "Parents and students can use 

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz
Bright and Early: The Education Newsblitz

The newsblitz cometh:

• Katherine Nakamura has been a dissenting voice on budget and labor issues on the school board -- and that could make her normally safe seat not-so-safe. We explain why.
• We blogged up a storm on Friday afternoon: A parent group demands to be consulted on cuts that impact federal money for disadvantaged kids. The teachers union and the school district are closer on furlough proposals. 
• A newly proposed law sponsored by the school district could save more than $6 million annually, we blog.
• And we blog that bids for the second project under a controversial labor pact for school construction came in low. The San Diego Daily Transcript also gives a rundown of the bids.
• SDNN looks at how much money San Diego Unified is spending to make sure that any student can take an Advanced Placement test -- and how the tests can change their grades.
• The Union-Tribune writes about the budget threat to small high schools. Interestingly, across the country, Cleveland is looking at dividing up its big high schools into small ones.
• Also in the UT: The Vista school board decided to spare jobs for nurses' aides, but

Sac City Open Enrollment

Open Enrollment

          

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Letter from Superintendent Raymond:

English | Spanish | Chinese | Hmong | Russian | Vietnamese

Dear Parents/ Guardians:

The Open Enrollment process is an opportunity for each student who resides permanently within the
boundaries of the Sacramento City Unified School District to apply for enrollment in participating elementary,
K-8, middle or high schools within the district, based on space availability for the 2010-2011 school year.
Parents or guardians will need to complete an application in order for their children to attend the “school of
choice” requested.

1. Application Process and Open Enrollment Dates: you from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m...read more
2. Lottery Process...read more
3. Lottery Placement Notification...read more
4. High School Specialized Programs: Students applying...read more

2010-2011 K-12 Open Enrollment

What is Open Enrollment?  

English

| Spanish | Chinese | Hmong | Russian | Vietnamese

Application Timeline:You can apply two ways!

24-hour On-line Application Process                 orAccess link above February 16, 2010 - February 28, 2010 Time: 24 hours a day

Walk-in Application ProcessAt the Serna Center, 5735 47th Avenue February 23, 2010 - February 25, 2010 Time: 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Click here for printable calendar  

Questions? Please call the Open Enrollment Office for directions or any other questions regarding this process
at (916) 643-2348 or 643-9075. 

• Frequently Asked Questions
  
• Schools Participating in 2010-2011 Open Enrollment
  
• School Descriptions:
  Elementary Schools  
  K-8 Schools 
  Middle Schools
  High Schools
  Independent Charter Schools
  
• Programs Offered at each School Site   
• Admission Requirements for Specialized Programs at:(Contact the school for more information)
• Camellia Basic
• John Morse
• Phoebe Hearst
• C.K. McClatchy
• John F. Kennedy
• West Campus 

 Students Residing in SCUSD:Open Enrollment is an opportunity for each student who resides permanently within the boundaries of SCUSD to apply for enrollment in participating elementary, K‐8, middle and / or high schools within the district. The Open Enrollment application period is scheduled for February 2010.

Students Residing Outside of SCUSD Boundaries:There are many students that attend SCUSD schools that live outside of district boundaries.  If you do not live in SCUSD, but wish to attend one of our schools, please visit with the school principal to learn if space is available.  Once space availability is determined, you must obtain an Inter-District Permit at your current school district office.  Once completed, submit the Inter-District Permit to the SCUSD Student Hearing and Placement Department.

For more information, please contact Mike Crosby in the Open Enrollment Office at 643‐2348. 

"Putting Children First"

Flypaper: Education reform ideas that stick, from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Flypaper: Education reform ideas that stick, from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Common standards

Dillon writes in the NYT this morning that the president, in a speech to the governors today, will announce that the administration’s NCLB proposal will require states to adopt “college- and career-ready standards” in order to receive Title I funds.

This is big and interesting news when combined with the administration’s push, via RTT, for common or national standards. This could potentially mean that a state that refuses to give up its age-old prerogative to unilaterally determine the content of its academic standards could disqualify itself from hundreds of millions of federal funds annually.

What remains to be seen is if states like Texas or Alaska that are balking at the national standards push would be able to argue that their non-common standards are “college- and career-ready.”

I do wonder, however, if a governor might stand up after the president’s speech and ask:

“Mr. President, your secretary of education continues to say that the federal government doesn’t have the answer and that Washington should get out of the way and allow states to make the most important 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO HOST COMMUNITY MEETINGS ON TURNING AROUND TEXAS’ LOWEST-PERFORMING SCHOOLS

Media Advisories--Department of Education
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO HOST COMMUNITY MEETINGS ON TURNING AROUND TEXAS’ LOWEST-PERFORMING SCHOOLS

Texas Eligible to Receive $337.9 Million to Turn Around Its Lowest-Performing Schools

U.S. Department of Education’s Alberto Retana will hold several community meetings in Austin, Texas, today (Monday) and Tuesday, Feb. 22-23, to discuss turning around Texas’ lowest-performing schools and the $337.9 million available to do so. During his two-day trip, Retana will meet with students at Reagan High School, parents of students who attend schools in the St. John area, and members of the St. John Community School Alliance.

Retana, director of community outreach for the U.S. Department of Education, will meet with students at Reagan High School from 4 to 6 p.m. today, Feb. 22, to hear how they worked with the community to improve their school and keep it open. Later this evening, at 7 p.m., Retana will travel to St. John Community Center to meet with parents whose children attend schools in the St. John area. He will hold a community discussion on the importance of turnaround schools.

On Tuesday, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Webb Middle School, Retana will meet with the St. John Community School Alliance to discuss its role in stopping the closure of Webb Middle and bringing strong turnaround improvements in the St. John area. The Alliance consist of more than 55 partner organizations, including non-profits, churches, businesses, schools and community groups, that meet monthly to plan ways to coordinate youth support in the St. John area.

This spring, the U.S. Department of Education will award states a total of $3.5 billion in Title I School Improvement grants to turn around their lowest-performing schools. The funds will be awarded by formula to states, which will then make competitive grants to local education agencies (LEAs). Texas is eligible to receive $337.9 million to turn around its lowest-performing schools.

This Week In Education: Thompson: The Equality Trust

This Week In Education: Thompson: The Equality Trust

The Spirit Level provides more social science documenting the obvious. Just as out-of-school effects trump schools’ and teachers’ contributions to learning, equality and inequality trumps economic wealth in creating a livable society. Americans living in more equal states live around 4 years longer than those living in more unequal states.

Similarly, "Unicef measured six different aspects of child well-being. Material well-being included such things as living in a home with few books, or where no adult was employed. Health and safety included items like immunization rates and deaths from accidents. Educational well-being included scores on performance tests and the proportion of children going into further education. Peer and family relationships were measured by such things as whether or not children viewed their peers as kind, and the numbers of children living in single parent and step-parent families. Behaviours and risks included smoking and drinking, how many children had sex by age 15, etc. Subjective well-being included self-rated health and other measures of how children felt about themselves." 

Eduflack: Eliminating Rainy Day Funds in NJ Schools?

Eduflack: Eliminating Rainy Day Funds in NJ Schools?

Eliminating Rainy Day Funds in NJ Schools?

Last fall, when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was suffering through one of its worse budget stalemates in modern memory, one of the debates was how deep should the state dip into its "rainy day" fund to balance the current budget.  Do you completely deplete your reserves to get a budget many can live with?  Or do you hold back some of that rainy day fund, with the fear that 2010 or 2011 may not be particularly sunny either?

Ultimately, Pennsylvania (like a lot of states in similar situations) decided to tap the vast majority of those reserves to keep the state moving forward.  Such funds are established to help navigate those doomsday budget scenarios, and those dollars, along with the billions coming through the feds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, help many a K-12 state school system stave off disaster.

With the federal stimulus money nearing sunset, we are starting to see those doomsday scenarios coming back to the forefront.  In Eduflack's home state of Virginia, new Gov. Bob McDonnell is proposing a $731 million cut in K-12 education.  Details are still in the works, but it seems clear that most public school systems — urban, suburban, and rural — will face the butcher's knife before the coming fiscal year's budget is complete.  Many feared that cuts were coming, but few expected them to be as deep as McDonnell is currently proposing.

More interesting, though, is what is happening in New Jersey, where equally new Gov. Chris Christie has also declared that the public schools will face massive cuts.  In many ways, the Garden State is in an even more dire financial situation than the Old Dominion, with higher unemployment rates, a bigger budget deficit to overcome, and a generally dimmer light at the end of the tunnel.

For nearly two weeks, communities in New Jersey have been abuzz about the impact of the cuts.  The Christie Administration has told all districts to prepare for the possibility of at least 15 percent reductions, with virtually every school district now talking about $1 million-plus reductions to the money they receive from the state.  And it comes at a time when local taxes are also unable to pull out from their downward spiral.

The Educated Reporter: AYKM?

The Educated Reporter: AYKM?
AYKM?

Do we really need another acronym to describe children who are not native English speakers?

While I am all about precision of language, I am also known for being particularly resistant to renaming things. I like to call things what people call them in real life. In Not Much Just Chillin’ I called a home ec teacher a “home ec teacher” and got angry letters from teachers mad I didn’t say “family and consumer science teacher.” Ditto when I called a media specialist in Tested the “librarian.” It takes nothing away from their professionalism to say that while the job description expands, the name can remain the same.

When I started out as an education writer, we had ESOL students: English for speakers of other languages. Or ESL students: English as a second language. Then came ELL: English language learners. I am fine with any of those, though I know they are not perfect. (English might be their third language!) In government use you see most often LEP, limited English proficient.

Impasse leaves Cal State University board without faculty reps - latimes.com

Impasse leaves Cal State University board without faculty reps - latimes.com:

"Schwarzenegger rejected two Academic Senate nominees to the board and asked for a broader list, but the Senate, worried about politicizing the panel, has refused to offer other names."

The Cal State University system's governing board has been without a faculty voice for eight months because of a disagreement between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the university's Academic Senate about who should occupy the seat.

The impasse has come at a critical time for the Cal State system, which has grappled in recent months with a $564-million cut in state funding, resulting in controversial decisions to raise student fees 32%, slash enrollment by 40,000 students over two years and require nearly all employees to take furlough days.

Last March, the faculty group sent the governor the names of two candidates it judged to be highly qualified for the trustee post. The faculty representative serves as liaison to Cal State's 23 campuses and represents the views of its 23,000 faculty members at board meetings. Cal State is the nation's largest system of higher education with 450,000 students.

But Schwarzenegger has yet to appoint either faculty nominee. Instead, the governor's appointments secretary in December asked the Academic Senate to "broaden the candidate pool with one or more candidates of diversity."

Both candidates -- Barry Pasternack, chairman of the information systems and decision sciences