Over the past four years, the 乌鸦传媒 of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) has been working closely with every local education agency (LEA) in the District to create a new data set that will transform operations for DC’s education system – the Course Data Collection. Each LEA is now sending OSSE daily updates about every class being provided in all of their schools, including the students enrolled in each class and their grades, who is teaching, the average time of the course and how often it meets each week, the amount of course credit earned for high school students, information about dual enrollment and career and technical education (CTE) courses and the languages used to teach the course.
Course data collection roughly doubles the amount of data that OSSE collects, and these data provide a much wider view of both the student and teaching experience across the District.
Some of the benefits of the Course Data Collection include:
- Better and Faster Data Sharing Among LEAs and Schools: OSSE will be able to facilitate sharing transcript data across LEAs and schools (within OSSE’s secure data systems). Some of the District’s most vulnerable students change schools throughout the year; the lag in schools receiving information about their current academic status can lead to unnecessary delays in enrolling them in appropriate courses at their new school.
- Gaining New Insight: The course data collection provides OSSE with the opportunity to learn about how schools operate. For the first time, the course data collection will allow OSSE to know what type of math and literacy curriculums are used by each school, support implementation and future development of academic standards, and learn more about the instruction provided to students who are English learners or receive special education services—including those students who are enrolled at nonpublic schools.
- Increased Awareness of Instructor Influence: The course data collection will allow OSSE to provide professional learning opportunities that are more responsive to current trends and needs at the classroom level. Analyzing course collection data District-wide can provide insight into research questions such as the type of teacher preparation and training that tends to lead to certain academic outcomes for students.
- Earlier Academic Intervention: Over time, the course data collection will give OSSE detailed information about the path toward graduation taken by each student in the District. This will allow OSSE to find bright spots as well as places where interventions may be needed.
- More Accurate Public Reporting: Currently, some of the information reported on the and other family-focused platforms is self-reported by LEAs. Substituting course collection data as the source will not only improve the quality of the data we are able to share but also remove the need for LEAs to provide some of this information. It will also allow OSSE to share data that is more descriptive about what is happening in schools. For example, OSSE can let parents know which Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses students have taken at a school in the past year, not just what the school is able to generally offer.
- Streamlining Existing Data Collections: Using direct access to a school’s student information system (SIS) will allow OSSE to eliminate certain data collections that can be done through the automated daily transfer (ADT) connection, instead of a separate process, like dual enrollment and CTE. Gaining more accurate and efficient access to this data may eliminate the need for OSSE to externally contract for some data analysis.
- Early District-Wide Impact: During this process, some LEAs have invested in deferred maintenance to comply with this new collection, which will lead to overall improvement in data quality. Additionally, the DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB) has eliminated their collection of high school course data and intends to rely on OSSE’s Course Data Collection as a replacement. In short, the collection has improved data quality and reduced the amount of data LEAs need to prepare.
- Reducing Burden for LEAs: Because this data is collected through a direct connection through OSSE’s ADT feed to the school’s SIS, LEAs only have to go through an annual data mapping process at the start of the school year. Otherwise, it is a passive process. In other words, LEAs can set it and forget it. By updating the academic records LEAs need to function, the LEA is submitting the required data to OSSE.
It is remarkable that OSSE is already at full participation, indicating that LEAs trust OSSE to be responsible stewards and analysts of this information and understand the importance and clear impact that the course data collection will make on the District’s education system. OSSE looks forward to refining the collection process over the next year, and will start using the data collected during the 2025-26 school year.