Maryland will get a new data collection system
Maryland just got a $6.5 million federal grant to build a new longitudinal database. That might sound dull, but it will have major implications for the state's school kids.
First, it will give the state the ability to track the progress of individual students or groups of students over time. Anyone who has followed the state board closely knows that the only way to get exact data on how many students had yet to pass the HSAs was to call more than 200 schools one by one.
Right now, the state gets virtually all its data from its 24 school districts, which don't always use the same methods to keep it. There is no way to track students moving from one jurisdiction to another. But the new system will allow the state to do that. In turn, the data will help Maryland keep better track of the graduation and dropout rates.
The system might make it possible to link student progress over a number of years to the work of individual teachers.
In a press release put out today, Nancy Grasmick said the tracking system "will better illuminate what works in our schools." But most important, perhaps, is that Maryland needs to be working on such a data system to make the state competitive for a number of stimulus grants.
It will be finished by 2014.
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
When & IF local school district next steps!!
Quote from the late Paul Harvey "Here is the rest of the story"
Q&A:Investigate further to report what insures that this new state data system and it's functioning purpose will trickel down to be compatible to all the local state school districts systems, will they also have extra funding provided for a data collection systems that will communicate with the new state data collection system???
Yes! I asked the 6 million dollar question.
Posted by: My Opinion | April 1, 2009 3:07 PM
2014? Really. That seems pretty ridiculous. You can build several skyscrapers in that amount of time. Ebay became a multi-national, leading corporation in three years. Does it really take that long to implement a data system?
Posted by: Bill | April 1, 2009 8:01 PM
Well...I believe "longitudinal" suggests repeated observations of the same data, over an extended period of time. Sometimes even many decades (1 decade=10 yrs). By that definition, 5 yrs (2014 subtract 2009) is a brief-some may even say rapid-implementation.
I think this is a good step in the right direction. Yeah Maryland!! Now if only we could do this nationally since sometimes our students move outside the state not just to another county.
Posted by: Alrighty Then... | April 2, 2009 1:19 PM