Current state and federal reform initiatives rely heavily on the ability of multiple stakeholders to access and use information from statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS) to improve student achievement. Policymakers believe that states are best positioned to achieve this by developing and implementing various policies impacting the educator workforce. They will also, for the first time on a larger and more visible scale, use student achievement as one of the primary indicators of both educator and program effectiveness. In this environment, it is critical for state policymakers, educators, and data managers alike to understand the importance of implementing a teacher-student data link in a valid and reliable way. While 24 states report having this link on the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) survey, it is clear that these linkages were not implemented for high stakes use. As a result, state and local data systems lack critical functions including the abilities to: (1) Account for the contributions of multiple educators in a single course; (2) Enable a teacher to review their roster for accuracy; (3) Incorporate common practices found in schools including virtual classes, labs, and team teaching; and (4) Link a student's attendance records with their teachers to track the actual number of days of instruction by a particular teacher. To address this emerging state need, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation tapped into the expertise at the Center for Educational Leadership and Technology (CELT) and funded them to lead the Teacher-Student Data Link Project (TSDL). This project is a cross-state, collaborative effort focused on developing a common, best practice definition of "Teacher of Record" and business processes for collecting and validating linked teacher and student data. This important initiative brings five states together to leverage their collective experiences, knowledge, and resources to determine a common definition and approach to one of the most critical components of their data systems and a key step in using data to increase student learning and improve teacher quality.
- Authorizing Institution
- Data Quality Campaign
- Peer Reviewed
- F
- Publication Type
- Reports - Descriptive
- Published in
- United States of America
Table of Contents
- Setting the Context 1
- Account for the contributions of multiple educators in a single course 1
- Enable a teacher to review their roster for accuracy 1
- Incorporate common practices found in schools including virtual classes labs and team teaching and 1
- Link a students attendance records with their teachers to track the actual number of days of instruction by a particular teacher. 1
- Identifying Promising Practices 1
- Leveraging State Experiences 1
- A common definitionframework of Teacher of Record based on the use of the data with associated policies processes and technology architecture that will guide and inform implementation. 2
- A set of promising practices based on the business processes that are critical to the effective alignment of teacher and student data. 2
- Strategies for validating teacher and student profiles and classroom rosters. 2
- State case studies that can be used for replication at the SEA LEA level. 2
- Data models for collecting reporting and updating the teacher-student data link. 2
- Emerging Promising Practices 2
- To Learn More 2
- Paige Kowalski Data Quality Campaign Tel. 202 262-5004 paigedataqualitycampaign.org Nancy Wilson Center for Educational Leadership and Technology CELT Tel. 774 249-9368 nwilsonceltcorp.com 2
