State Coordinator Meeting March 2014. Provide some information about data basics Give you the chance to connect data to the daily activities of a state.

So You Wanna Be a Data Geek?

State Coordinator Meeting

March 2014

Purpose of Session

Provide some information about data basics

Give you the chance to connect data to the daily activities of a state coordinator

Provide a forum for idea sharing

Data Basics

US ED collects info via EDFacts– Consolidated State Performance Report (CSPR)

Other data you may want to use– Other education program data– Available at http://eddataexpress.ed.gov – Poverty rates– Unemployment rates– Data housed by other agencies

Data Basics

Confidentiality Concerns– FERPA rules– Other agency’s rules and law– Consider the group size

Quality Concerns– What could’ve skewed the data– Can you control for it

Data Basics

Be mindful of the data type and what it does

– Causative– Correlational– Descriptive

Want to Know More

CSPR Data Collection Guide

center.serve.org/nche/pr/fed_data_coll_guide.php

NCHE Homeless Liaison Toolkit

center.serve.org/nche/downloads/toolkit2/ch13.pdf

Test Your Knowledge

We’ll provide a challenge: Scenario & questions

If you accept the challenge: Share your answer

Remember:– Scenarios are from the state coordinator’s view– Answers must be in the form of data– A group of minds is greater than a single mind, so

share your ideas

Challenge #1

Early in the day, you spoke to a liaison regarding a young man who is doubled up in the district. The young man is behind in credits for graduation and he has a history of discipline referrals and suspensions. Questions about possible gang affiliations have been raised, although no gang related behavior has been observed at school. Now the district’s assistant superintendent is calling you. He’s upset that you told the liaison the McKinney Act requires the district to enroll the student, citing pressures from DOE and the media to lower dropout rates. In his opinion, the young man is a dropout waiting to happen and while it may be in his best interest to enroll in the district, it certainly isn’t in the district’s best interest.

Challenge #2

You’re serving on a subcommittee of the state Interagency Council on Homelessness that is focused on performance issues. The subcommittee is meeting with a grantee that has consistently performed poorly on HUD indicators to notify them of consequences should they continue to perform badly and to provide TA so they can improve. The grantee claims the schools won’t work with them and they will not share any data with the shelter, which is why their performance indicators are poor.

Challenge #3

Recently you had a conversation with someone at the higher education agency in your state after you did a joint training in preparation for College Goal Sunday. The training went really well, so you were both excited about the idea of expanding your efforts to help homeless students access and succeed in higher education. When you mentioned it to your colleague’s boss though, he was skeptical and questioned the need to do more.

Challenge #4

The school year is over and districts are submitting their final data reports for the year. As the data steward for your program, the data division is requesting you examine the data to verify it is accurate for submission to EdFacts. You notice one of your grantees has submitted 0 homeless students while another has submitted 15. As a result, you contact the liaisons who are surprised the info was submitted and panic when you tell them the numbers submitted for their districts.

Challenge #5

Your state agency is talking budget cuts; despite your federal funding, you now must justify any travel to local programs for training or TA. Otherwise, all travel requests are automatically denied. Recently you submitted travel requests to 6 districts in your state; your director is now in your cubicle, with questions about if you really need to do all this travel.