DatabasED

In our first live-audience episode, hosted at Teachers College in New York City, we talk with Dr. Brandi Hinnant-Crawford (Clemson University), Dr. Ryan Baker (University of Pennsylvania), and Dr. Subriya Jubilee (School District of Philadelphia) about how data and analytics can be used to change rather than reinforce systemic inequities in schools and districts. Major themes in this episode include the importance of a people-centered perspective while using data (including both adults and students); the tools offered by improvement science for empowering educators to measure data points that are relevant and authentic; and the role of system design in limiting possible equity outcomes. Our panelists envision a future in which students are supported to achieve their goals without the barriers of inequitable systems–something that has never yet been accomplished in U.S. education. Special thanks to Dr. Alex Bowers for organizing the ELDA conference and this recording!

Episode resources

Dr. Brandi Hinnant-Crawford

This week we talk with Dr. Amy Hawn Nelson, Director of Training and Technical Assistance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy about AISP’s 2020 publication, “A Toolkit for Centering Racial Equity throughout Data Integration.” The Toolkit, and Dr. Hawn Nelson’s discussion in this episode, give great guidance about ways that we can improve the design, governance, use, and quality of data integrations in ways that serve all community stakeholders. We also have a special guest host for this episode; Emily Oakes is the Data Steward for Learning Management and Learning Analytics Data at Indiana University and is also the Principal Unizin IT Consultant for IU. Emily works on similar topics in higher education, and her insights gave us a great perspective on how these issues are similar and different across levels.

Episode resources:

In Episode 2 of Season 2, we talk with Dr. May Hara of Framingham State University and Dr. Annalee Good of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research about their new book, Teachers as Policy Advocates: Strategies for Collaboration and Change. Following the book’s chapter themes, we discuss policy areas of school safety and discipline, assessment, public health and COVID-19, and digital learning, specifically highlighting areas where the languages of DatabasED potentially intersect. In the words of Dr. Good, the episode helps us “look under the hood” of how education policies can be accessed and addressed by teachers and how teacher policy advocacy often intersects with school and district leadership and even district technology offices. Show resources:

In Episode 1 of Season 2, we talk with an interdisciplinary group of staff from Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia, which has been working on their single-district Ed-Fi implementation since 2018. Joanna Kaylor (Supervisor of Enterprise Support and Analytics), Kara Bane (Supervisor of Data Science and Digital Solutions), and Jana Griffith (School Improvement and Accountability Specialist) share with us the pros and cons of doing an Ed-Fi implementation completely in-house; the absolute necessity of scoping a narrow use case at the beginning; and the benefits of having both the technical and instructional side involved in both technical implementation and rollout to users. 

Resources mentioned in episode:

Our guests this week are Dr. Shane Fairbairn and Sherod Keen from the North East Florida Educational Consortium, or NEFEC. NEFEC is a regional nonprofit educational service agency established to provide cooperative services to small and rural member districts. Through membership in NEFEC, districts are able to meet educational goals and objectives more effectively and affordably. They offer a wide range of programs and services, but today we will primarily be discussing their implementation of the Ed-Fi data standard. NEFEC was the first local education agency consortium to implement the Ed-Fi data standard, beginning in 2013 and serving 15 member districts. Shane, Sherod, and their other colleagues at NEFEC were instrumental in helping guide INsite’s own implementation of the Ed-Fi data standard. During the episode, Shane shares his love of metaphors, Sherod predicts the future of Ed-Fi, and we learn that Rosh is chock-full of dependencies.

Episode links:

“Everything we do supports the teacher-student relationship.” Adam Love, assistant principal at Decatur Middle School in the Metropolitan School District (MSD) of Decatur Township in Indianapolis, was one of the first school-level stakeholders to work closely with us on utilizing interoperable data to make a difference in the lives of students in his building, and his work ultimately resulted in the establishment of data-driven decision making processes across the district. His dedication to his students and teachers inspires us every day, and we are so pleased to share his story and vision with the DatabasED audience.

Show notes:

In this episode, we talk with educational consultant, data scientist, book author, podcast host, and former educational psychologist Ryan Estrellado about living in the Venn diagrams of overlapping professional communities and finding your (our) place in those intersections. We talk about practical strategies for working with educators who have a wide variety of interests in data and specifically tools for data analysis, and about breaking down common misconceptions about data analysis or data science as it can be used to answer real questions in local educational settings. Although we had planned to focus the episode on Ryan's new book, we accidentally ended up spending an entire hour discussing about unusual professional trajectories and how data and coding have influenced all of us (for the better). Some day we will do another episode where we actually talk about Ryan's book, but in the meantime, we recommend that you go ahead and check it out! The content is truly accessible to all educators, wherever you happen to be in terms of your data journey (whether that journey was embarked upon voluntarily or otherwise). Check out the link below to get a 20% off code for the book!

Abbreviations:

In part II of Episode 10 (or technically Episode 11, because Anchor does not recognize decimal points), we dive even deeper into the challenges and potential solutions to balancing the need for increased linkages between individualization and standardization of special education data, as well as the possible integration of compliance and accountability processes. Sarah has a data epiphany as well as an idea for a new grant proposal, Joel confesses his newfound love for data science, and Jennifer crosses "podcast guest" off her bucket list.

Part II episode resources:

SEA: State education agency

Today we bring you the first segment of a very special two-part episode in which we get to speak with three guests representing all three of the focus areas that we've been working to bridge in this podcast: Joel Boehner, Assistant Director of Exceptional Learners at South Bend Community School Corporation, Dr. Sarah Hurwitz, associate professor in special education at Indiana University - Bloomington, and Dr. Jennifer Meller, Associate Manager for Special Education Consulting Services at PCG (Public Consulting Group), the vendor providing the statewide Indiana IEP (IIEP) software for managing data and documents related to the education of students with disabilities. In the first segment of this episode, we discuss how the connections among these individuals' work came about, as well as several relatively recent trends in the federal requirements for educating students with disabilities, such as the move from a focus on compliance to results-driven accountability (RDA) and the challenges and opportunities for utilizing a data standard with very individualized education goals and progress data. We hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed recording it! Stay tuned for Part II next week.

Show notes & abbreviations

This week we talk with two leaders from the Metropolitan School District (MSD) of Steuben County in Angola, Indiana, Chantell Manahan (Director of Technology) and Dr. Schauna Relue (Curriculum Director). Over the past two years, our guests have worked as a close, cross-sectional team on the district’s use cases for student and district improvement as part of their implementation of the Ed-Fi data standard. In the episode, we discuss their strategies for data governance, the importance of professional development and support in changing data practices, and ways in which technology can enhance data-driven improvement processes such as “data war rooms.”

Show notes and abbreviations:

In this episode, we reminisce with Tim Pritchett, Technology Director at Monroe County Community School Corporation here in Bloomington, about our experiences moving through the early and difficult stages of implementing Ed-Fi and how we all ended up safely on the other side. We touch on personal and professional development, having faith in big ideas, and the power of multiple sectors being focused on one goal.

Episode Resources:

In this episode, we talk with Don Dailey, the 'Don' of Ed-fi collaboratives, about how he heralded the dawn of interoperability technology to Michigan's state education data systems (last godfather pun, we promise). But seriously, he does take us back to the days before personal computers, when student information and district finance systems were on mainframes. Don is the Director of Systems Integration and Interoperability providing leadership to the Michigan Data Hub project as part of the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators. He spearheaded the Michigan Data Hub’s implementation of the Ed-Fi data standard nearly 9 years ago, and he won the Ed-Fi Ambassador of the Year award in 2017. Don and his team have done an amazing job of successfully coordinating data and technology stakeholders, educators, researchers, and even state legislators and other policymakers. We have learned much from him over the years and are excited to have him share a slice of his knowledge in this episode.

Show notes:

In this episode, we talk with Dr. John Watson, data scientist at the San Diego County Office of Education, about the ways in which data scientists provide value for education organizations. We touch on the evolution of standards in education and the need to be aware of multiple intelligences (both within students and within educators looking at data); the (ideally) iterative process of data solutions and output within education agencies; the “emergency data collection” that occurred at the beginning of the pandemic; the development and limits of standards in the health and education sectors; and trying to balance rapid technological advances with the need for stability and investment in training.

Episode resources:

San Diego County Office of Education: https://www.sdcoe.net/Pages/Home.aspx 

Baker, R. S., Berning, A. W., Gowda, S. M., Zhang, S., & Hawn, A. (2020). Predicting K-12 dropout. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 25(1), 28-54. (early access version: https://www.upenn.edu/learninganalytics/ryanbaker/PredictingK12Dropout.pdf)

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Michael Gottfried, applied economist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Kent McIntosh, professor at the University of Oregon and co-director of the US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs’ National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Dr. Gottfried and Dr. McIntosh are experts on the use of transactional attendance and discipline/behavior data, respectively, in educational research and practice. We hear about their recent research findings and how these findings can be used by school and district staff to reduce inequitable outcomes among students by race/ethnicity. We also discuss the range of implications that pandemic-related school closures have had on research in these areas, and ideas for future research on student engagement and behavior beyond attendance and discipline records.

Episode resources:

Michael Gottfried: https://www.gse.upenn.edu/academics/faculty-directory/gottfried 

https://www.gse.upenn.edu/news/california-district-study-finds-latinx-students-latinx-teachers-attend-more-school

Gottfried, M., Kirksey, J. J., & Fletcher, T. L. (2021). Do high school students with a same-race teacher attend class more often? Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/01623737211032241 

Kent McIntosh: https://education.uoregon.edu/directory/faculty/all/kentm

"A school-wide intervention that increases racial equity in exclusionary school discipline." https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-228#

McIntosh, K., et al. (2021). Equity-focused PBIS approach reduces racial inequities in school discipline: A randomized controlled trial. School Psychology, 36(6), 433-444. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000466 

Schoolwide Information System (SWIS) and Positive Behavior Intervention Support Apps (PBISapps.org):

In this episode, the INsite team talks with K12 analytics engineer Marcos Alcozer about his experiences and opinions with the idea of "real time" data and analytics in educational settings. We discuss the importance of understanding users' needs, get into operational databases versus denormalized data warehouses, consider the tradeoffs around performance and cost, and Marcos gets vulnerable about data governance.

Episode resources:

Marcos' youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtiBvdj_XGP4gDjh24Z0rw  

Dagster: https://dagster.io/ 

“Data cannot speak for itself.” In our first episode, we speak with Dr. Alex Bowers, Professor of Education Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University, about the topics of data analysis, predictive analytics, and working with educators to leverage data for student and community growth. We discuss his four A’s of early warning systems, which should be Accurate, Accessible, Actionable, and Accountable, as well our experiences with the skillful and collaborative data work that classroom teachers and school leaders are doing across the country. We also touch on the differences between standardized assessments, classroom grades, and other measures of learning and performance; the multiple purposes of schooling in the U.S. and why we have local control; and how tech developers and researchers can better work with educators to help students and communities.

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