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Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) Attains Third Longitudinal Data System Grant

In May 2010, Arkansas became one of only six states to capture three highly competitive U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (IES) grants, totaling $17 million, to develop a statewide longitudinal data system. Metis Associates partnered closely with the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE), helping it to prepare the complex applications that won all three grants.

With this funding, Arkansas has built the capacity to examine the effects of its educational system on every child in the state, from preschool into the post-high-school years. The data system is available to teachers, principals, district supervisors, and state administrators to promote data-driven decision making from the classroom to the statewide level. Metis has played an ongoing and comprehensive role, serving as both a technical advisor — helping to implement the system and providing project-management and data-quality support — and acting as an evaluator of the project.

In 2008, through its extensive involvement in managing this system, Metis was in the ideal position to help the department secure a second three-year grant from IES, which enabled it to extend the data to young people from kindergarten through age 20 and to focus on helping teachers and administrators use those data to enhance teaching and learning. The third grant will be used to connect this trove of educational data with information from other agencies such as those dealing with social services and workforce development agencies. These new inputs will help the state correlate educational achievement with success in the workforce or higher education and answer important questions about, for example, the educational progress of children in foster care.

"This information will go a long way toward helping the ADE to coordinate critical information across the state to make the case for their needs to legislators and the governor," says Alan Simon, executive vice president of Metis Associates.

According to Dr. Simon, the aim of the system is to enable teachers to adapt their instructional methodology and provide individual help on a much more precise level. There is evidence emerging from the Metis evaluation that students in classes taught by teachers who access the system more often are experiencing improved state scores.