Wisconsin State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grants
Since 2006, Wisconsin has had a series of four-year grants from the Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences to build and enhance services to students, parents and school staff.
What is a Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS)?
The U.S. Department of Education Institute for Education Sciences (IES) sponsors the SLDS Grant Program. Funding from the program allowed for the initial development and continued enhancement of our longitudinal data system. The SLDS projects are intended to create tools to facilitate data-driven decision-making for school and district improvement, and to assist educators looking to raise individual student achievement and close achievement gaps.
Key components of Wisconsin's SLDS:
- A comprehensive data warehouse storing and linking student and school data over time from a variety of sources
- A security application (Application Security Manager) that ensures only authorized personnel view confidential data
- Secured reporting tools such as WISEdash for Districts and SAFE, the Secure Access File Exchange, that allow authorized users to analyze and provide access to key data, including individual student records
- Public reporting on the WISEdash Public Portal
- Providing opportunities for professional development
- Including data collections beyond test scores, creating a richer picture of student performance.
Development of our statewide longitudinal data system is an ongoing project involving many components. Continued development of our Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) enables DPI to satisfy key aspects of our state’s educational priorities:
- Closing the achievement gap
- Building 21st century skills
- Moving toward a P20W data system in which all stakeholders can make informed decisions based on sound data.
Overall development initiatives include:
- Adding new datasets
- Building new reporting tools for public and/or secured reporting
- Building new reports and dashboards to support research, public reporting and secured reporting
- Enhancing current tools
Wisconsin's SLDS Vision:
"Provide a cost-effective, integrated educational analysis and reporting system to support teachers and school administrators making informed decisions to improve student achievement."
The VISION Includes:
- Parents and community members learning more about their schools
- Accurate and timely data reporting to meet Federal, State, and local requirements
- Diagnostic and policy-relevant research
- Data-informed decision-making at the state, district, school, classroom, and student level
Pre-Grant Conditions:
- Internal data siloed and hard to use
- Not much data sharing with other state agencies
Benefits of SLDS Grants:
- Creating data model and reporting tools
- Building data warehouse and dashboard
- Leveraging partnerships
- Advanced postsecondary infrastructure
- Web-based, integrated teacher licensing and data management
- Early childhood longitudinal research and feasibility study, including the Early Childhood Integrated Data System (ECIDS)