Advancing and Enriching Education in Wisconsin: Leveraging Partnerships to Accelerate Progress toward a Meaningful Longitudinal Data System

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and key partners view the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) state longitudinal data system (SLDS) grant as an opportunity to expand beyond our currently planned PK-16 data system capacity. The proposed grant will enable the implementation of additional capabilities to promote a more robust and sustainable PK-16 data system with greater interoperability among education institutions and other state agencies. While enriching current post-secondary alignment efforts, DPI proposes to incorporate teacher licensure data into the SLDS and study early childhood data collections. Specifically, the proposed upgrades focus on three objectives: 

1. Advanced Postsecondary Infrastructure: Leverage momentum to accelerate data sharing and interoperability among state education agencies To fully capitalize on the investment of federal and state resources to develop a strong L DS, DPI and its key partners, the University of Wisconsin System (UW System), the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS), and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (WAICU) will transition from patchwork data sharing to an interoperable data system that safely and efficiently enables more informative research. 
2. II. Great Teachers and Leaders: Transition to a web-based, integrated teacher licensing and data management system, improving data accessibility and quality. As greater emphasis is placed on teacher quality, training, and professional development data, the limitations of Wisconsin’s aging teacher licensing and certification system have become increasingly apparent. Creating an SL DS integrated educator licensing system is essential to capture data elements that will enable meaningful analysis to drive improvement of classroom instruction and teacher education. This online program will greatly improve data exchange and accessibility for education institutions, partner agencies, and educators. 
3. III. Early childhood longitudinal research: Develop a high quality data plan around early childhood educational programs. Research demonstrates the profound impact that early childhood interventions can have on student development and achievement. Like many states, Wisconsin targets crucial resources toward early intervention programs. However, since a comprehensive early childhood data system does not exist, and individual programs are not linked with the SLDS, meaningful program evaluation and cost-benefit analysis remains beyond our grasp. We intend to complete a feasibility study to evaluate current early childhood education data collections and create a plan for eventual data sharing between DPI and partner agencies. 

Expected Outcomes: The main goal of our SLDS efforts is development of an interoperable system that supports data exchanges as well as ad hoc research requests. This system will follow students as they transition from early childhood programs through K-12 schools, and on from K-12 to post-secondary institutions. This data stream will enable stakeholders to complete meaningful research that will ultimately inform and improve the education our state provides.