New Hampshire's Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Application

A personalized education plan that deals with all aspects of a child's development is the best way to help children succeed. Follow The Child is New Hampshire's child-centered approach to education that supports each student's academic, physical, social, and personal development. A central theme of Follow The Child is the establishment of benchmarks and measurements of growth for all four dimensions of development.

The Department began collecting individual student records for all students two years ago. Having student-level data creates a wealth of information not previously available, but the quantity of this data makes it unwieldy. Because the State has no data warehouse and no decision support tool, valuable information is not reaching policy makers and teachers. This proposal includes three components to unlock the potential of student level data and support the Follow The Child initiative.

The Department will create a comprehensive decision support system. All types of student, school, district, program, and policy data, along with Census, geographic and tax data will eventually be loaded to a central data repository for state and federal reporting, policy research, and analysis. Customized interfaces and ad hoc capabilities will make this a valuable resource for Department program managers, policy analysts, and other education leadership. The grant will fund the purchase of hardware, decision support software, and consultants to help design the data architecture and data model. To ensure that the project stays on track, three new grant funded staff positions will be dedicated to this project. The Department will ensure staffing support continues after the grant ends.

This spring, when New Hampshire launches the Follow The Child Assistance Center, all teachers in the state will be able to analyze results of state assessments, as well as locally selected assessments. This grant will expand the system to allow teachers to create their own assessments, set benchmarks, and follow the growth of individual students, and to access a shared library of curriculum and lesson plan resources with built-in links to the State's grade level expectations. With its specific focus on each child, the Follow The Child Assistance Center will be the teachers' longitudinal data warehouse. Districts will be able to manage secure access for their staff and the parents of their students. Teacher training will be partially subsidized by the grant.

The third component of the grant addresses the longitudinal link with higher education. Last year the Governor created the P-16 Working Group and asked them to "increase access and success at all education levels by regularly assessing educational accomplishments, bridging curricular, increasing articulation, and sharing data, including the development of a shared data system." A grant funded consultant will work with the Department, the University System of New Hampshire, and the New Hampshire Community Technical College System to develop a white paper identifying opportunities and strategies for sharing data sharing and compare the Department's P–12 student data model to student data models used by the two post-secondary systems.