Sharon Gaston

Texas will strengthen our infrastructure to improve the usability and usefulness of education data, capitalize on recent legislation to link new data sources to produce public-facing reports, and support our implementation of the latest version of the national Ed-Fi data standards.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) was awarded two federal grants, SLDS 2009 and SLDS 2009 ARRA, as well as a private grant from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF), to overhaul its statewide longitudinal data system.

For over 20 years, Texas has demonstrated a strong commitment to thorough data collection and the use of data to support policy decisions. As a result, many of the required Data Elements for a statewide longitudinal data system are currently in place. However, the current systems do not effectively support increasing demands for timely, transparent, accessible, and actionable data across the P-20 continuum.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) proposes to expand the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) to include classroom level information for students and teachers and to expand the collection of student course completion data to include grades one through twelve.