State Department of Education

PROJECT PURPOSE

The purpose of this project is to modernize the overall infrastructure, interoperability, and privacy/security policies of the Oklahoma State Department of Education?s (OSDE) data systems. The original longitudinal student data system was initially funded and designed in 2012. Parts of the system are broken, challenges with data collection exist, technology is outdated, and inefficiencies and difficulties subsist, which impact meeting the needs of schools, districts, the public, the OSDE, and the Legislature. Over the past seven months, the OSDE engaged Abbott Advisor Group to garner a holistic view of the current status of comprehensive data systems, existing and potential problems with systems, and processes in place. These outdated data systems have put Oklahoma?s student data at risk and the OSDE has continually exhausted resources to ?patch-work? fixes. The need to modernize includes updating the underlying data model, migrating to a modern data transport infrastructure, and simplifying the overall architecture. Modernizing OSDE?s data systems will: ? Protect student information from data exposures and breaches; ? Increase transparency by providing real-time data to the public; ? Reduce the burden of school leaders by integrating all OSDE?s data collection and reporting; and ? Allow district to locally select their student information systems.

EVIDENCE

Interventions at the school and district level should be tailored to contextual needs identified through comprehensive needs assessments and root cause analyses. These needs assessments are dependent on high-quality and accurate data that are collected, cleaned, and reported through the state and district data systems. The appropriate selection of evidence-based interventions is threatened by the aging and problematic state data infrastructure. Therefore, a modernization effort that enables users to have access to real-time, accurate, and transparent data can improve the monitoring of conditions, contexts, and environments that inform the selection of appropriate evidence-based interventions to support students. Furthermore, the Legislature and communities cannot take action on data that are not meaningful.

POPULATION DESCRIPTION

As with any significant initiative impacting 540 school districts, 700,000 students and families, more than 40,000 teachers, and other state and federal agencies, providing leadership, expertise, and management is crucial. While this initiative will improve data quality affecting all schools, it perhaps is most impactful to students and families that have been most adversely impacted by the pandemic, which include students from historically disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. A more accurate and transparent data system can provide insight into what educational opportunities are at greatest risk as a result of the pandemic for already at-risk populations. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increased need for data on school conditions, environment, and performance. This expanded need to understand school quality under the pandemic has led to the identification of several system-level limitations due to the age and structure of the state's data system. Modernizing the system can help address root-causes inhibiting the state from collecting and reporting such data. Furthermore, the OSDE faces challenges around unique student identifiers. While this raises a privacy and security issue, the lack of a solution in resolving the identifier issues compounds data use issues. For example, multiple families possessing the same student identifier may inhibit the state or districts from being able to understand what students need certain services academically, behaviorally or environmentally.

PERFORMANCE MEASURING

This is a three-year initiative including three deliverables: 1. Strategic Plan/Roadmap ? This will define the comprehensive architecture and data governance plan, infrastructure implementation, and capacity building requirements to ensure state integration. 2. System Requirements ? This includes needs analysis in the discovery phase, which will focus on the existing architecture, components, and connections. Implementation plans will be defined once the gap between the planned and existing requirements is identified. 3. Foundation ? The foundation will be based on the overall roadmap and used as a yearly comparison point to ensure the system is functioning appropriately and building toward desired features and functionalities.

ONGOING INVESTMENT AMOUNT

$

ONGOING INVESTMENT DESCRIPTION

Request includes 2 yrs of district supports, ongoing costs will be requested in OSDE budget

ONGOING INVESTMENT REQUIRED

Not able to continue operation without additional funding from the State of Oklahoma