RIDE and Partners Receive Federal Grant to Improve Use of School Data

Published on Thursday, April 09, 2020

$3.24 Million to Help Close Equity Gaps for Students Across Rhode Island

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), the Rhode Island Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner, DataSpark at the University of Rhode Island, and the Annenberg Institute at Brown University were recently awarded a $3.24 million federal Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant to improve equity in education across the state. The state team will use the funds, which were provided by the U.S. Department of Education, over the next four years to improve the use of data to boost K-12 student performance in Rhode Island.



“Now more than ever, we need to make sure that we strengthen our ability to focus on identifying equity gaps and evaluating how best to close them,” said Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green. “This new federal grant will allow us to use data more strategically to analyze those gaps at the school and district levels and develop solutions to close those gaps efficiently. This will provide a powerful example of using data to drive Excellence in Education.”



Efforts to target the needs of historically disadvantaged student groups in Rhode Island have been hampered by lack of strong evidence as to where best to focus attention and what to do once that focus is clear. While some equity issues are interrelated, policymakers face resource constraints that make it nearly impossible to take on all needs at once.



State and local administrators need better information concerning how and where to intervene when it comes to better serving particular groups of students; they need stronger evidence about the types of responses that are most likely to make a difference in specific contexts; and they need to be able to track implementation so that they can make course corrections as needed.



The Rhode Island team’s proposal will address this set of challenges through three concurrent workstreams:



1) Adding to the Data Set: The state’s approach aims to enhance existing SLDS structures by including data that allows for a broader look at the challenges disadvantaged students face both inside and outside the classroom. This data will include additional student well-being and school climate outcomes that are directly pertinent to equity issues, but often unavailable to local leaders.



2) More Data in Local Hands: The state team will follow the lead of a handful of other states, such as Tennessee and Georgia, that have integrated data tools within their SLDS platforms in order to place long-term strategic planning data directly in the hands of district and school administrators. This workstream will produce a data and planning tool, integrated with the Rhode Island federal and state grant funding system.



3) Focus on Groups of Schools and Districts: Rhode Island will launch a program of research and experimentation focused on identifying particular patterns around inequitable student access to resources and providing better insight to schools and districts around interventions likely to make a difference. This workstream will group schools and districts based on their “equity profiles” and generate evidence-based guidance for school leaders to implement in state-led learning networks.



The newly funded work will also enhance the capability of Rhode Island’s existing SLDS to share data directly with local administrators and generate knowledge around equity-focused interventions by encouraging local experimentation, idea-sharing, and rigorous evaluation.



Learn more about Rhode Island’s approach to leveraging longitudinal data to improve student outcomes at www.ridatahub.org.