Jon Fullerton, Jacob Alonso, James Bridgeforth, Dion Burns, Miguel Casar, Jeimee Estrada, Shira Haderlein, Julie Marsh, Beth Meloy, Laura Mulfinger, Amanda Pickett, Morgan S. Polikoff, Heather Price, Vandeka Rodgers, Beth Schueler, Deborah Stipek, Mariana De Franca Steil, Akunna Uka
A strong data infrastructure can help district and school leaders understand student progress in school and after graduation, enable researchers to identify equity gaps and evaluate which programs and strategies help close them, provide policymakers with evidence about implementation and who benefits from policy, and support schools, students, and families in navigating complex systems and making informed decisions.
California has built a substantial education data infrastructure over the past two decades. The California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) provides a standardized statewide source of K–12 student, course, teacher, and program data. The California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI) provides tools that help students, families, schools, and counselors track college readiness and complete key college-going steps. The California Cradle-to-Career Data System links information across K–12, higher education, workforce, and other public systems in ways that were not previously possible. These systems are beginning to make data more actionable, helping students track college readiness, allowing districts to examine postsecondary outcomes, and giving the state new ways to study policy implementation and equity.
At the same time, California’s education data ecosystem remains complex, uneven, and incomplete. Local education agencies (LEAs) rely on many different operational systems, with substantial variation in local data capacity, staffing, and access to analytical support. County Offices of Education, research partnerships, and third-party providers help fill some of these gaps, but access to those supports varies widely by geography and local resources. As a result, some districts can integrate and use data to guide decisions, while others only have capacity to focus primarily on compliance and reporting.
Important gaps also remain in the state’s own data. Some data are not collected at the right levels or at all, including early education and program participation data for major initiatives. Other data are defined inconsistently across LEAs, including criteria for reclassification in multilingual programs, limiting comparability across districts. Some potentially important data, including information on immigration status and LGBTQ students, are not collected or linked at the state level, in part reflecting legitimate privacy and policy considerations. Data about multilingual programming, such as curriculum or multilingual program type, and associated student enrollment or teacher assignment, are missing and thus cannot inform analysis of what opportunities may work for various groups of students.
Still other data are collected and reported in ways that inhibit usability and learning, including key planning and accountability documents such as LCAPs and SARCs, which are only available in static formats that make comparison difficult. Public accountability tools that use data, such as the California School Dashboard and School Accountability Report Cards (SARCs), are difficult to use, though the state has recently made some efforts to provide stand-alone data downloads from the various SARC tables (“Downloadable SARC Data Files”). Even when data exist, they are not always shared in forms that are easy for educators, families, researchers, and policymakers to use (Stipek and Meloy; Haderlein and Polikoff; Fullerton).
This brief draws on the Getting Down to Facts III technical reports to describe California’s current education data infrastructure, identify major strengths and persistent weaknesses, and outline policy choices that could make the state’s data systems more useful. The core question is whether California’s growing data infrastructure will reach educators, families, and policymakers in forms they can use to improve student outcomes.
Key Findings
1. California’s data landscape has improved substantially, with more timely information available to students and families and new cross-system linkages that expand what the state, researchers, and the public can learn from education data. Systems such as CCGI and the California Cradle-to-Career Data System have strengthened the state’s ability to connect information across education and postsecondary pathways in ways that were not previously possible.
2. Access to data, analytic support, and integrated systems varies substantially by LEA size and geographic region. Differences in local capacity, data systems, and reporting practices mean that some LEAs can integrate and use data for improvement, while others have far less access to usable data and analytical support. Variations in data definitions and data entry also limit comparability across LEAs.
3. Significant data gaps remain, especially in early childhood and in the state collection of information needed to understand program implementation and student experience. Data on early childhood are often fragmented and not linked across systems, and in other areas such as expanded learning the state collects too little information to support basic implementation monitoring or evaluation.
4. California’s public data and accountability tools provide substantial information, but they are often difficult to interpret, compare, and use. Multiple public data sources report similar information in different ways, and the lack of clear alignment across tools makes it difficult to understand trends or compare results across agencies.
