Dive Brief:
- The Indiana Department of Education has taken various pre-K-12 student and school performance data points and developed an interactive dashboard that officials hope better illustrates how the state is preparing students for successful postsecondary outcomes.
- Officials are hoping the user-friendly dashboard, titled Graduates Prepared to Succeed, helps educators, families, colleges and business leaders collaborate and develop best practices for getting students ready for life after high school.
- The dashboard has a secure authenticated space, not available to the public, that superintendents and principals can use to help make decisions about individual student and schoolwide interventions. "It should certainly help to drive decision making at that local school," said Katie Jenner, Indiana's secretary of education.
Dive Insight:
The dashboard went live in December, but developers continue to add more features — including the school-level authentication portal. A state law passed in 2021 required the creation of the dashboard.
Some of the statewide data points on the dashboard include 3rd grade proficiency in key literacy skills, graduation completion, postgraduation employment, and 6th grade math growth. School-level data points include attendance, performance on standardized testing, and advanced coursework prior to 9th grade. The data can be disaggregated by student demographics.
The state is planning in the near-term to include school-level information on kindergarten readiness and pre-K-2 literacy performance. Additionally, the state is developing a measurement for work-based learning experiences, Jenner said.
While many of the data points included on the dashboard had previously been public, they were difficult to find or on websites across different state agencies, Jenner said. Connecting the data in one place can help educators and others more easily see where there are potential model practices, as well as where interventions are needed, she said.
"We're trying to really target what each population might need or find beneficial," Jenner said.
Some data points, however, might not have all the answers and instead serve as a jumping off point to have more conversations or do more research about what is contributing to high achievement or what are barriers to progress, she said.
Through the development of the dashboard, the state also has learned valuable lessons about its practices, Jenner said. It understood, for example, that there were greater opportunities to work across agencies, such as the Indiana Department of Workforce Development and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, to ensure efforts to support schools and students complement each other.
"As state leaders, it's very easy to be in our own silos of agencies that we're leading," Jenner said, adding that agencies are making collaboration improvements.
The state worked with Indianapolis-based Resultant, a data management consulting firm, to develop the dashboard. Curt Merlau, director of education practice at Resultant, said data is critical in helping educators and others make decisions to support students.
He said planners wanted to make the Indiana dashboard easy and quick to use. "We wanted it to tell a story of where we are as a state and where we need to go next," Merlau said. "By being transparent and putting out there — where we've been and where we're going — we can all get on the same page.”
