The Ohio Longitudinal Data System Study:
A Collaborative Approach to Support State Education

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) recognizes the essential benefits to classroom instruction and student achievement that can result from providing educators with seamless, technology-based access to (a) student performance data, (b) enriching opportunities to better understand and utilize these data for targeting learning needs, and (c) instructional materials that align with state standards.  The first step in this effort is ODE’s implementation of a statewide Longitudinal Data System (LDS), which enables the state to collect, analyze and make available disaggregated educational data through a coherent statewide interface.  The Data Driven Decisions for Academic Achievement (D3A2) initiative takes LDS a step further, calling upon the state’s partnership with and service to multiple stakeholders to create a culture in which educators think differently about the potential of accountability data to inform improvements in teaching and learning. 

Hezel Associates’ statewide evaluation of the D3A2/LDS project will provide ODE and key stakeholders with important information about the initiative’s quality and effectiveness through a combination of formative and summative research activities that will take place over three years.  During the evaluation’s first year, the Hezel team will administer professional development needs assessment and data usage surveys among administrators and teachers.  Hezel Associates will supplement the data gathered from these surveys with in-depth case studies conducted annually over the evaluation’s three years to determine changes in statewide data usage practices over time. 

In the second year, the Hezel team will also observe the implementation of D3A2 professional development and administer pre- and post-professional development surveys to determine the training’s impact on participants’ understanding of and attitudes toward data usage.  Post-professional development surveys will also gather data on participants’ perceptions of the quality and areas of needed improvement associated with the training they received.  To supplement the survey, case study and observational data, the Hezel team will conduct two additional research activities during the evaluation’s final year that will help inform the Project’s overall impact: we will administer an impact survey and examine longitudinal trends in student performance data over the course of the Project.

Hezel Associates’ comprehensive evaluation strategy of employing a variety of data collection methods that build upon one another throughout the Project’s three years will provide ODE with the kinds of sensitive, longitudinal data necessary to detect the subtle changes that often characterize the initial adoption phases of a large-scale educational initiative.