Empowering Indiana’s Education System with Transparent Data
The "Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed" (Indiana GPS) dashboard simplifies data access, enabling better student outcomes.
Overview
After Indiana mandated a new school performance dashboard, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) embarked on an ambitious project to bring greater clarity to statewide student and school outcomes. By collecting, verifying, integrating, and displaying student college and career readiness data, the department hoped to align families, educators, and policymakers on priorities and unite everyone in improving student outcomes.
Unifying Student Data to Drive College and Career Readiness
Indiana GPS dashboard, developed by IDOE and Resultant, integrates data to track student progress toward college and career readiness using the Ed-Fi Data Standard.
To achieve its goal, IDOE partnered with Resultant to build Indiana GPS. This powerful tool leverages the state’s existing Statewide Longitudinal Data System and gathers data through the IDOE’s modernized Data Exchange built on the Ed-Fi Data Standard and technology suite.
By integrating vast amounts of data, Indiana GPS shows stakeholders how Indiana students are progressing toward college and career readiness across several performance indicators, including:
- • Attendance
- • Graduation Pathways
- • Completion Third-Grade Literacy
- • Sixth-Grade Math Growth
- • College and Career Credentials
- • Employment and Enrollment
The main component of the dashboard is a public view that zooms in or out on key metrics, allowing Indiana parents and community members to see information — from yearly changes in statewide attendance data to reading outcomes for English Language Learners (ELL) students in a particular grade and district. And, to ensure student data privacy, the dashboard applies data suppression rules for public data, using IDOE’s existing user roles and suppression methods.
Of course, the integration process was not without challenges.
“One of our biggest hurdles was ensuring data consistency across different sources,” explained Bobby Grimm, Engagement Manager at Resultant. “We had to develop robust data cleaning and validation processes to ensure the accuracy of the information presented.”
“What’s examined, improves. When you start to hold up all these different streams of data publicly, conversations change, and schools can strive for excellence in many different areas in an informed way.”
Dr. John Keller
CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER • INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Looking Ahead
While other states have implemented similar dashboards, Indiana’s GPS stands out for its comprehensive approach. Instead of focusing solely on K-12 metrics, Indiana’s GPS includes post-graduation data, providing a more complete picture of student success. Additionally, IDOE is expanding the GPS platform to include more indicators, such as Pre-K-Grade 2 literacy.
“Our next big steps for GPS will be adding new metrics and implementing a robust data refresh process to make the site easier to maintain,” said Dr. John Keller, Chief Information Officer, Indiana Department of Education.
By providing transparent, easy-to-access data, Indiana GPS is enabling more informed decisions, illuminating a path to student success, shaping Indiana’s education system, and creating a blueprint for other states.
Learn more about Indiana’s efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism by visiting the Indiana Department of Education website.