Washington State Longitudinal Data System Project

The Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) proposes a four-year project to enhance a statewide K-12 data system to efficiently link and manage individual student data consistent with the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. The proposed project titled, the Washington State Longitudinal Data System Project will be built on the existing Comprehensive Education Data and Research System (CEDARS). When fully developed, the system will provide longitudinal assessments of student and teacher growth; provide useful data that aligns curriculum with desired student outcomes and provide transparency of information with a demonstration of governmental accountability to students, parents, taxpayers, policy makers and other stakeholders. 

The proposed project will provide OSPI with a gap analysis of what data we currently collect and what data is needed; will develop stronger data quality with an agency data governance analysis, and use this analysis to develop governance model. The project will allow the successful completion of the core set of requirements for efficiently transferring education data from schools and districts to the state while protecting student privacy. Interoperability will be supported between other key external education partner organizations, including the department of early learning and the higher education data system. 

Over time, different state and federal programs and policies have required a variety of education data elements for reporting and evaluation. With this, each program area developed customized definitions, collection criteria and update schedules for subgroups receiving services. As program reporting requirements were added for accountability and school improvement purposes, similar core elements were collected and stored between multiple data systems, resulting in redundant data, data silos and ever expanding data storage needs. 

Most importantly, the data needs of the education stakeholders will be more effectively and efficiently served. The proposed project will provide the integration of business line applications and metadata management for the seventeen various component systems. Third-party analytical, business management processing, governance tools and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) web services will be used to construct an enterprise-wide Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that will take CEDARS to the next step of interoperability. 

The specific outcomes expected from the Washington Longitudinal Data Systems Project are: 1.) a fully developed, dimensional data warehouse; 2.) a central framework for documentation and implementation of business rules to increase consistency, transparency and facilitate data transfer, 3.) online querying and reporting capabilities via data dashboards and query tools and 4.) a training and certification program for users and business partners who will increase data quality and system use and sustainability.