By Jeff Strohl, Director
The US stands out among the world’s economies because of its significant investment in data infrastructure across myriad sectors, including the Commerce Department, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Education. Access to these data sources enables researchers, policymakers, federal and state government officials, educators, and any interested American citizen to better identify and understand existing problems and propose actionable solutions. Simply put, data give us the ability to improve many aspects of American life and work towards a more perfect union.
Good data are not partisan — they are the foundation of good policy. During her confirmation hearing, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon pointed to the decline in test scores as evidence that the K–12 education system is failing our students. Without good data, this is nothing but an unsupported assertion. Test scores alone do not determine the quality of education, but they are an important fact-based barometer of performance. Data collected by the Department of Education are used by school administrators to track student outcomes, to inform school and district goals, to measure program and curricula effectiveness, to set future attainment goals, to assess student performance, and much more. While some data are available at local and state levels, without a federal repository that aggregates the data, the K–12 and postsecondary school systems will lack the ability to benchmark and compare performance to other states and to a national average. We must not enter a world where schools are evaluated based on perception, not evidence.
Before driving a bulldozer through information systems that took years to build, it would be worth considering how important good information is to students, educators, consumers, employers, and markets. We know from education and workforce data, for example, that there are significant mismatches between what employers are demanding from workers and what credentials local colleges are producing. We know that some postsecondary credentials are worth more than others, and that colleges with lesser-known brand names have ROIs as high as some of the best-known colleges. These insights allow consumers to live better lives and make smarter investments in their futures. They also help employers invest in their workers, improving productivity and employee satisfaction. Markets operate more efficiently with better information. The research based on these data also helps educators prepare students for the jobs of the future, helps policymakers more effectively invest taxpayer dollars, and promotes US national competitiveness by supporting optimal human capital development.
In the current political climate, some seem to think that data collection is an unnecessary, even wasteful exercise. While we can provide reasoned, non-partisan arguments for the protection of data, we have little ability to temper the current urge to destroy. The court system eventually may provide reprieve, but, in the interim, damage is being done. We must use our energy to map the data resources that are likely to remain available, determine how to use them, and plan for the future.
Without federal data, we may increasingly need to turn to data from private sources and State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS). These options hold promise, but they are far from perfect. Private data vendors have little motivation to report sources or disclose inaccuracies. State longitudinal data systems could become comprehensive, but the usefulness of these systems is presently hindered by privacy concerns, lack of access, and limited data. Organizations like the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and the Coleridge Initiative, however, demonstrate that good analysis of proprietary and state data with proper privacy protections are well within reach.
Now is a good time to remember David Stevens, former director, and Ting Zhang, associate director and assistant professor of the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore. They urged researchers to generate convincing business arguments for data — arguments that substantiate the nation’s need for these data and that these data are critical for effective policy and a strong economy. The evidence shows we need more investment in our nation’s data infrastructure, not less.
A little over a decade ago, CEW advised the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and congressional staffers to include occupational data in the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act. Our efforts failed, in part, because we did not adequately demonstrate that the value of those specific data outweighed the administrative burden of collecting the data. Data on occupations would be incredibly illuminating — we could use it to map career pathways and to evaluate education and training investments. We would know for the first time how many people work in the field that matches their college credential.
We learned an important lesson from failure: we have to combat the impression that the burden and costs of collecting data outweigh its value. We need to demonstrate how good data improve people’s daily lives. Destroying the remarkable data capacity we’ve built over the past few decades will leave us limping into the future instead of leading it.
