End the Student Data Blackout With a Patchwork of State Data
By Allie Bidwell, Communications Staff
Data is a powerful tool in the world of higher education. But with the federal government unable to collect certain data points to answer important questions about students, patching together information from state data systems could provide a more comprehensive picture of student outcomes, according to a new brief.
In the brief, “Is Stitching the State Data Systems the Solution to the College Blackout?” Iris Palmer, a senior policy analyst with New America’s Education Policy Program, explores the idea of “stitching together” state data systems to create a workaround for the restriction on student-level data. Although there has been strong support among advocacy groups and some lawmakers to create a federal student unit record system, collecting student-level data has been banned since 2008, when a provision in the Higher Education Opportunity Act prohibited Congress from creating the system.
“This ban amounted to a college blackout, depriving the public and policymakers of information about which schools are doing the best job serving students,” Palmer wrote in the brief.
It is impossible to get a national picture, for example, of how many non-traditional students attend college and whether they succeed; what happens to students who are counted as not graduating from their original institution, whether they dropped out or transferred; and whether students find employment after graduating. Since then, the federal government has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into state efforts to develop and strengthen their own data systems. It should be possible, then, to piece together the information each state collects, Palmer suggests.
But while some groups worked to develop thorough proposals to create a sort of patchwork of state data systems, it became clear that some problems would arise, including how to account for information for students who attend private institutions, and navigating the complexity of a 50-state system, according to the brief.
Theoretically, each state would submit student data to a third party that would collect and analyze the data, clean it, and match the information between states. But the hypothetical 50-state system would not capture information from the more than two million students who attend private colleges. It would also be necessary to make both participation and publication of the data mandatory, which could dissuade some states, unless it was required of states through legislation. Constructing the system would also lead to concerns about data privacy, and would be difficult because not all state data systems are designed in exactly the same way.
“While a state-based data system can be developed, it is far from an ideal replacement for the current higher education reporting system,” Palmer wrote. “Instead, creating a single, federal student unit record system could be a simpler and faster way to end the college blackout.”
Publication Date: 4/20/2016
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