A New Vision for
Education Data Use
Vision and Context
Vision for Data Quality, Use and Coordination Across the New Jersey

Current data initiatives in the Department
– Data Coordination Group and Task Forces to drive key Department data initiatives
– Actions underway to streamline collections, coordinate across department, and speed
up processes

Paradigm shift in the capacity and functionality of NJ SMART
– Since the beginning, NJ SMART was more commonly viewed by LEAs as the destination
for submitting state and federal report data
– New data collections and emerging functionality improve NJ SMART as a critical source
for applying data in shaping strategy and policy for LEAs and NJ DOE

Professional development needed for DOE and LEA leaders to build capacity

Calculating and reporting student growth percentiles injects an additional indicator into NJ’s
discussion and efforts to improve student performance
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Goals – Education Data Use in New Jersey

All DOE program areas use data from NJ SMART to inform policy decisions.

School and district accountability is based on student growth in addition to proficiency
snapshots from year to year.

Principals are able to identify teachers, programs and interventions that are having the
greatest success with student learning.

Students are tracked from pre-school to college and students are flagged for intervention at
the earliest indication that they are off-track.

Principals are asking researchable questions, digging into data, and building action plans for
improving instruction.

Parents and other public stakeholders are able to answer their questions about the
performance of schools.

Districts do not have to submit duplicative data because all data are shared across DOE
program areas.
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Satisfying NJ’s SFSF Data System Assurances

In 2009, New Jersey elected to receive $1.33 Billion in State Fiscal Stabilization
Funds. As a condition of receiving these funds, New Jersey had to commit to
improving results for all students and advancing education reform by:
– Increasing teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of highly qualified teachers.
– Adopting rigorous college- and career-ready standards and assessments.
– Targeted, intensive support and effective interventions to turn around struggling
schools.
– Establishing data systems and using that data for improvement at the district level.

The current phase of NJ SMART’s development will satisfy each of the data
systems outlined in NJ’s SFSF application.

The NJ DOE is leveraging this opportunity to eliminate redundancies, streamline
internal data collections, and promote easy and secure access to education data.
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Why Student Growth Percentile (SGP)?
Learning and Teaching:
The Concept of Status and Growth = Performance

College and career readiness as central goal
– The central goal of New Jersey’s public education system is to teach the skills and
knowledge necessary to ensure college and career readiness.

Status and growth as indicators of success
– Though appropriate for making judgments about the achievement level of students
at a school for a given year, status measures like point-in-time standardized test
scores are inappropriate for judgments about educational effectiveness.
– Learning is demonstrated by growth in student achievement from one point in
time to another.
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Statewide Implementation Phases
Phase 1:
Working with
Preliminary
Data Set
Phase 2:
Preparing for
Rollout
Phase
Goals
Phase I
Working with
Preliminary Dataset
•
Phase II
Preparing for Rollout
•
•
•
•
Phase 3:
Engaging
Dissemination
Groups
Phase 4:
Scaling Up
and Rolling
Out
Timeframe
Run the analyses and identify/develop various types of data
displays
Share preliminary 2010 data set with NJ DOE
Finalize specific rollout strategy details
Months 0-3
(Through July)
Create a technical advisory group for stakeholder buy-in and
advisement
Define the essential data use scenarios for technical advisory
group users (principals and supervisors) as the primary
consumers and users of growth data
Months 4-7
(August – October)
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Statewide Implementation Phases
Phase 1:
Working with
Preliminary
Data Set
Phase 2:
Preparing for
Rollout
Phase
Goals
Phase III
Creating
Understanding and
Action /Engaging
Dissemination Groups
•
•
Phase IV
Scaling Up and Rolling
Out
•
•
•
•
•
Phase 3:
Engaging
Dissemination
Groups
Phase 4:
Scaling Up
and Rolling
Out
Timeframe
Create training materials for professional development
Disseminate growth data displays to leadership of NJASA
(supervisors/administrators), NJPTA (parents), NJEA
(teachers), NJSBA (school boards) and pilot districts
Provide orientations to leadership of these groups on SGP and
facilitate open conversations around use of growth scores and
accountability
Months 8-12
(October – January)
Roll out growth data to entire state (public tools)
Conduct trainings and facilitate feedback forums
Present to membership at NJEA, NJPTA, and NJSBA
conferences
Monitor growth data usage
Months 12 onward
(2012)
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Student Growth Percentiles Video
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Traditional Presentation of Status Metrics
2010 NJ ASK Mathematics (Grade 8)
60
57
56
50
40
32
30
Male
23
Female
20
10
4
0
0
Partially Proficient
Proficient
Advanced
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Adding a New Dimension to Performance
Female Male
Advanced
Proficient
Partially
Proficient
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Using Student Growth Percentile (SGP)
SGP expands the conversation from “who’s proficient and who’s not?”
to “are we creating an educational environment where
all students are learning?”
 Using individual SGPs to identify students in need of intervention
– Which of these students are you concerned about?
– Which of these students are successful?
 Using median SGPs to identify successful practices at the school or
classroom level
– Which schools/classrooms are having the most success with their
students?
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State Level Visualization
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District/School Visualization
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Based on what you learned from video, do
you feel you had enough information to
have these conversations at your school?
What remaining questions to you have
about growth?
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NJ SMART - Currently in Development
Module
Description
Student Growth
 Use assessment data to calculate student growth measures according to the
student growth percentile model selected by NJ DOE
 Link student assessment data year-to-year and provide state, district, and school
leaders with the capacity to quantify student growth from one year to the next
Graduation
 Provide the State of New Jersey with a graduation measure that is accurate and
consistent with federal standards
 Assign each student to a specific cohort, track individual student’s progress
towards graduation, and update that progress as official data becomes available
to classify their grade-level cohort status
Discipline
 Link NJ SMART to New Jersey’s Electronic Violence and Vandalism Reporting
System (EVVRS)
 Provide data to reveal longitudinal patterns of violence which can be used to
inform strategies to help keep students and their schools safe
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NJ SMART - Currently in Development
Module
Description
Post-Secondary
 Expand NJ SMART from a K-12 longitudinal data warehouse to a K-20
longitudinal data warehouse by linking NJ SMART with National Student
Clearinghouse data
 Provide districts and schools with information about actual post graduate
enrollment, persistence, and accomplishment
Staff and
Certification
 Collect and track the levels of education and certification of school faculty
members across all public districts, schools and grades
 Assign a unique identification number in the system through a series of
proprietary algorithmic steps so that longitudinal matching of records across all
NJ SMART submissions and NJ DOE analysis can be performed
Course and Section
 Collect the necessary data to track which students are participating in specific
courses as well as identify the educators teaching these courses
 Load standardized course codes, student rosters, teacher assignments, and
other relevant course and section data and validate business rules as defined by
NJ DOE
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NJ SMART - Currently in Development
Module
Description
Data Expansion
 Expand the capacity of data collected by NJ SMART and thus build on the
foundation already established for collecting, linking, and storing data
longitudinally
 Consolidate DOE collections to ease the burden on school districts while
ensuring high data quality
Professional
Development
 Design and develop a series of professional development workshops
 Provide workshops that focus on increasing data quality and data use for
district and school improvement planning
Business Intelligence
Tool
 Develop and support a tool capable of performing advanced statistical analysis
and analytical functions necessary for ad-hoc querying of the data
 Provide professional development to state-level users
Public/Community
Access Tool
 Allow public users the ability to view and download de-identified student data
through a simple web interface
 Provide official aggregate data that has been cleansed according to a policy
established by the NJ DOE
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Where NJPSA Can Help Inform the SGP Conversation…
 Provide insight on the delivery, visualization and use of student growth
data
 Provide a conduit for educational opportunities related to data collections,
data use and professional development
 Serve as DOE and PCG’s partner in facilitating conversations among key
education stakeholder groups , specifically regarding student growth
percentiles, professional development opportunities, post secondary data,
and public/community access portal
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 What is Growth?  Individual SGP  Aggregate SGP  Wrapping Up
Tools
Training & Assistance
 NJ SMART Data Warehouse
 Materials from instructor-led
course, Using Student Growth
Percentiles
 Using Student Growth
Percentiles Course
 11/14 @ NJPSA
 NJ SMART Help Desk
o 1.800.254.0295
o njsmart@pcgus.com
 Help tab at www.njsmart.org
Available Resources
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Thank You!