Visualizing Equity: Supporting Continuity in Educational Opportunities for Students with Additional Needs Using Virginia's Cross-Sector Longitudinal Data System

The Virginia Longitudinal Data System (VLDS) is a cross-sector, federated data system that has been providing de-identified longitudinal student data to researchers for the past six years to improve educational outcomes for students in the Commonwealth. While the system works as intended for researchers, VLDS is limited in its capacity to provide data in a meaningful way to other educational stakeholders, particularly legislators and local practitioners. To meet the equity commitments established for the recently launched Virginia is for All Learners equity campaign, the VDOE needs to ensure robust data on equity is available to policymakers, practitioners, families, and other stakeholders to understand the conditions that currently exist in their state, divisions, and schools.

The project has two goals: (1) to ensure research using data from VLDS is reflective of policy-relevant, equity-focused research questions and (2) to increase access to and transparency of VLDS data to a broader audience of education stakeholders.