Facilitating Data Integration through Education Choice and Equity-Driven Research-Practice Partnerships

Through the support of previous State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grants, DPI developed and maintains the Wisconsin Information System for Education (WISE), a wide-ranging data system that provides Wisconsin educators with high-quality, relevant student data to support administrative reporting, research, data inquiry, and continuous improvement planning.

This project will integrate several key systems into the WISE suite, including our Education Choice systems, the primary mechanism for distributing the vast majority of our school aids, and the underlying enterprise database which feeds nearly all information systems at DPI. These systems and tools are all inextricably linked from a business process flow, and the integration upgrades will benefit Local Education Agency (LEA) and DPI staff by streamlining efforts and addressing data quality issues that exist due to the current non-integrated approach.

In addition, we intend to further institutionalize the partnership structures established between DPI and UW-Madison through the 2015 SLDS grant by creating a working group of researchers, evaluators, and practitioners. This group will leverage the new data infrastructure elements and relationships to address critical problems of practice identified by DPI and Wisconsin educators engaged in continuous improvement.