Harnessing Data to Improve College and Career Readiness in San Diego County
Case Study: San Diego County
Overview
Over the years, the San Diego County Office of Education (SDCOE) has launched data programs to help schools meet accountability standards and form annual plans. To give educators deeper, richer insight into how the county’s learners progress from week to week, SDCOE created a new, more robust program built on the Ed-Fi Data Standard: a dashboard that displays current, high-quality student data to track students’ college and career readiness.
“The dashboard points to where you can take action based on information that is updated daily.”
John Watson
Data Scientist, SDCOE
Data in Action
The SDCOE college and career readiness dashboard eliminates the lag between districts reporting their data and educators’ access to actionable insights. Including integrated data from multiple sources allows any educator to gain rapid and relevant insight into a student’s journey — something that previously would not have been possible without considerable time, energy, and research investment.
Similarly, SDCOE considered how to make the dashboard work for the wide variety of districts it serves. SDCOE learned from past experiences that too much complexity can discourage use, so the team prioritized creating something scalable, approachable, and trackable. Likewise, it became clear that increasing access to difficult-to-obtain data that supports college and career readiness would boost usage. To meet this need, the team designed the new dashboard to communicate trends on the district, school, and student levels.
The dashboard captures dynamic categories including:
- Attendance – This element on the dashboard, along with the practical support the agency offers through other data programs, empowers schools to understand and address absenteeism through refined processes and procedures.
- Grades – Rather than seeing grades in aggregate at the end of a semester, the dashboard allows educators to see how individual students are doing at any given moment as course grading is submitted. Additionally, educators can see where students thrive and better understand their strengths and interests.
- CTE and dual-enrollment courses – By incorporating continuing education and dual-enrollment data, the dashboard shows educators how students are progressing and which life path they may be interested in pursuing. This supports opportunities to tailor college and career readiness, create meaningful learning, and increase students’ engagement.
“The trifecta of schools seeing the data, using our other resources, and having help on the ground with everything from understanding to improving processes and procedures around absence, is making a difference.”
John Watson
Data Scientist, SDCOE
College and Career Dashboard in Action
Investment in integrated data is emerging as a critical tool for a small charter school that SDCOE collaborated with on a college and career readiness dashboard. After many of its students expressed difficulty aligning “traditional” coursework with their goals and interests, the school opted for a practical rather than a theoretical focus and began teaching academic subjects in the context of career-relevant skills for technical fields. For example, each year, groups of students collaborate to build small houses, including electrical and plumbing fixtures, while completing complementary lessons in physics, chemistry, and other subjects relevant to their project.
While they saw the powerful impact this experiential approach had on students, the school’s educators lacked data to support or refine their model. Since working with SDCOE on this system, the school has been able to provide input on their specific data reporting needs, allowing all educators — from administrators to classroom teachers — to start conversations with a shared reference point and solid evidence to back up their assertions. Implementing the Ed-Fi Data Standard equipped SDCOE with a set of live data, enabling them to configure the dashboard to suit the needs of each local education agency.
What’s Next for SDCOE?
On January 1, 2024, the agency gathered its scattered data specialists in a new department called the Data and Impact Center of Excellence (DICE). Along with maintaining and updating the existing programs, the group is pursuing a bold agenda, including using data to reduce the county’s poverty from 51% in 2022-23 to 35% over the next six years.
By empowering its schools with carefully chosen, well-packaged data, SDCOE has created a model for other educational leaders who want to help students reach their full potential in school and beyond.
About San Diego County Office of Education
SDCOE supports approximately 780 schools and approximately 500,000 students. It provides a variety of services for the county’s 42 school districts, 129 charter schools, and five community college districts. Its mission is inspiring and leading innovation in education and its north star goal over the next several years is to reduce the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch as part of a larger effort to elevate the needs of historically underserved students and families.