Texas

The following profile is a representation of the Texas public education state longitudinal data system (SLDS) as presented through publicly available resources of public primary, secondary and higher education, information made available to the public through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Data Quality Campaign, published research articles, other third party internet resources (as noted), and direct contact with state and federal public education officials.   It is not a formal program evaluation.

The information provided is intended for use by academic researchers, state and federal public education policy makers, educators, and student households.

Introduction Evaluation Criteria Governance and Maintenance Data Providers
Funding Researcher Access Public User Portal Legal Statues
DQC Contact Schematic State Response
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Download State Profile TPEIR Dashboard TPEIR Website NCES Funding:
2009
2009-ARRA
2015

Introduction

The Texas PK-16 Public Education Information Resource (TPEIR)[1] is Texas’s public education state longitudinal data system (SLDS)[2], managed jointly by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) [3]and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB)[4]. The TPEIR loads public K-12 and higher education data records into a comprehensive, robust longitudinal data system. Workforce data are also loaded into the data system and are supplied by the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) to facilitate the evaluation of students’ workforce outcomes. The creation of the TPEIR is part of a nation-wide effort to record granular education data and subsequent workforce outcomes in order to document the entirety of the student education experience. This information is intended to be available for analysis and public policy consideration for the purpose of producing improvements in student learning at elementary, secondary, post-secondary, and higher education levels, and to optimize labor market outcomes.

Texas is one of the 47 states having received public funding to create a state longitudinal data system (SLDS). Despite state-to-state differences, each SLDS shares a common purpose of supporting research and analysis with the intent of informing individual, household, and public policy decisions based on standardized criteria.

[1] The Texas Public Education Information Resource collects and analyzes PK-16 individual student level data provided by various state agencies and institutions http://www.texaseducationinfo.org/
[2] State longitudinal data systems are intended to enhance the ability of states to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data https://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/about_SLDS.asp
[3] The Texas Education Agency is a state agency that oversees primary and secondary public education in the state of Texas http://tea.texas.gov/About_TEA/Welcome_and_Overview/
[4] The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board provides leadership and coordination for the Texas higher education system http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/index.cfm?objectid=1549605ACCD86338049B9BDED023088E 5 The Data Quality Campaign is a national, nonprofit organization leading the effort to bring every part of the education community together to empower educators, parents, and policymakers with quality information to make decisions that ensure students excel
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Evaluation Criteria

This review assesses the overall quality of the TPEIR as an SLDS by considering the nature of the organizations overseeing the data system, those agencies providing inputs to the data system, and to which agencies and institutions the data system’s outputs are available. The assessment also considers the data system’s funding mechanisms, internal and external researcher data accessibility, the quality of the data system’s public user interface (dashboard), and the data system’s current Data Quality Campaign (DQC)5 ranking. This report considers each of these criteria pertaining to the TPEIR and provides contact information to the departments and individuals who maintain and manage the SLDS.

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Governance and Maintenance

The TPEIR is jointly managed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB). The TEA is a state agency charged with maintaining and improving the quality of the state’s P-12 public education system. It achieves this goal by assessing the effectiveness of the state’s public education system, providing funding for the various components of the public education system, and conducting research and policy planning to create statewide initiatives to improve student performance. The department within the TEA that specifically oversees the TPEIR is the Office of Academics.

The THECB is a state agency charged with providing leadership and coordination for the state’s higher education system. It achieves this goal by promoting access, affordability, quality and success in Texas’s higher education institutions. The TEA and THECB collect data from several different operational systems and combine them into the TPEIR data warehouse, creating a data store that holds both raw and aggregated data.

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Data Providers

The TPEIR receives data records from the following agencies and data systems:

Texas Education Agency[1]

  • Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) – P-12 public education data
  • Educator Leadership and Quality – P-12 educator certification data
  • State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) – Grades 3-12 public education student assessment data

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board[2]

  • Coordinating Board Management Reports
  • Public University data
  • Public Community, Technical, and State College data
  • Public Health-related Institution data
  • Independent Colleges and University data (through THECB-linked reports)
  • Texas Workforce Commission (TWC)[3]
  • UI wage records
[1] Information located within the TPEIR portal http://www.texaseducationinfo.org/Home/Us/About%20Our%20Data
[2] Information located within the TPEIR portal http://www.texaseducationinfo.org/Home/Us/About%20Our%20Data
[3] The Texas Workforce Commission is a state agency charged with overseeing and providing workforce development services to employers and job seekers http://www.twc.state.tx.us/abouttexasworkforce
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Funding

The TEA applied for federal funding through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), an agency of the United States Department of Education, in 2009 and 2015 and was awarded three grants, the 2009 SLDS Grant, the 2009 ARRA SLDS Grant, and the 2015 SLDS Grant, for the purpose of developing and enhancing the agency’s data system capabilities. The 2009 SLDS Grant awarded the TEA $ in part for the purpose of improving the robustness of the TEA’s existing databases. A portion of this funding was used to pay for the various costs associated with improving databases, including: personnel costs, travel costs, equipment costs, contractual costs, and other indirect costs. The proposed outcomes to be produced from this funding include: [1]

  • Improve the robustness of existing databases by adding student performance and teacher data at the classroom level, K-20.
  • PEIMS data collections will be expanded: Classroom level data and course completion data will be collected for grades 1-12.
  • THECB data collection will be expanded to receive student/class data including grades and links to faculty, grades 13-20.
  • K-12 districts and institutions of higher education will be trained and will have modified their systems to meet new reporting requirements.

The 2009 ARRA SLDS Grant awarded the TEA $ in part for the purpose of integrating new data in the TPEIR and improving data collection efficiencies throughout the state. This funding was used to pay for the various costs associated with the data integration services, including: personnel costs, travel costs, equipment costs, contractual costs, and other indirect costs. The proposed outcomes to be produced using this funding include: [2]

  • Integrate key data into the P-20 Data Warehouse to better understand students’ preparedness to contribute to the twenty-first century workforce o Load existing college readiness test score collections into the LDS
  • Expand the LDS to include pre-K, kindergarten and workforce data
  • Alleviate data collection burden on districts and improve data quality o Realign statewide collection standards and protocols for districts
  • Expand the architecture to support new standards and collection platform
  • Automate data collection through the development of a state-sponsored SIS
  • Develop data services and loading the District Connections Database
  • Create District Connections Database extract certification and validation tools
  • Deploy statewide data collection and management platform pilot

The 2015 SLDS Grant awarded the TEA $ in part for the purpose of expanding the data collected in the TPEIR and creating new reporting mechanisms within the data system. A portion of this funding was used to pay for various costs associated with these data system developments, including: personnel costs, travel costs, equipment costs, contractual costs, and other indirect costs. The proposed outcomes to be produced using this funding include:[3]

  • Expand the data collected and hosted by collecting additional early learning data, expanding organization data in the ODS (Operational Data Store), and creating assessment converter tools.
  • Expand participation in SLDS by allocating ECDS adoption support, inputting new early learning data in studentGPS®, creating educator work groups, analyzing studentGPS® metrics, adding FHSP (Foundation High School Program) to studentGPS®, and supporting further studentGPS® adoption by local education agencies.
  • Improve transparency by providing better access to TEDS (Texas Education Data Standards) and studentGPS® metrics database.
  • Share new and existing analysis with the public by adding new early learning reports in TPEIR (Texas PK-16 Public Education Information Resource)
[1] Information provided by the National Center for Education Statistics https://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/state.asp?stateabbr=TX
[2] See ref. 8
[3] See ref. 8
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Research Accommodation

The TEA encourages interested parties, including outside researchers, to contact its Division of Research and Analysis or the Public Information Request (PIR) Office if they would like to request data that are not provided within the TPEIR website or the TEA online site.

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Public User Portal

The TPEIR public-user portal provides information about:

  • The purpose of the TPEIR
  • Summarization of education programs currently in place within the state of Texas
  • Privacy and FERPA statements pertaining to private student records information
  • The agencies that provide input data records for the TPEIR
  • The reports and data resources that are available within the website
  • Contact information for TPEIR overseers
  • Other websites that provide Texas education data resources

The reports available within the TPEIR website consist of:

  • Education overview information
  • P-12 information
  • High school to college information
  • Higher education information
  • School to employment information
  • Educator information
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The Texas legislature has enacted the following statutes regarding state education data systems:

77th Legislature, General Appropriations Act

THECB – Article III, Rider 36

  1. Information Access Initiative. The Higher Education Coordinating Board shall coordinate with the Texas Education Agency and the State Board for Educator Certification regarding sharing, integrating, and housing pre-kindergarten through grade 16 (P-16) public education data in implementing its Information Access Initiative. The three agencies shall work together to ensure that common and related data held by each agency is maintained in standardized, compatible formats to enable the efficient exchange of information between agencies and for matching of individual student records for longitudinally based studies and analysis. It is the intent of the Legislature that individual initiatives interact seamlessly across agency systems to 12 facilitate efforts to integrate the relevant data from each agency into a longitudinal public education data resource to provide a widely accessible P-16 public education data warehouse.

SBEC – Article III, Rider 6

  1. Integrated Reporting System. The State Board for Educator Certification shall coordinate with the Texas Education Agency and the Higher Education Coordinating Board regarding sharing, integrating, and housing pre-kindergarten through grade 16 (P-16) public education data. The three agencies shall work together to ensure that common and related data held by each agency is maintained in standardized, compatible formats to enable the efficient exchange of information between agencies and for matching of individual student records for longitudinally based studies and analysis. It is the intent of the Legislature that individual initiatives interact seamlessly across agency systems to facilitate efforts to integrate the relevant data from each agency into a longitudinal public education data resource to provide a widely accessible P-16 public education data warehouse.
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DQC

The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan national advocacy organization that evaluates each state’s longitudinal data system to determine how effectively each state uses their data system for education improvement purposes. The DQC’s annual survey, Data for Action (DFA)[1], measures each state’s progress towards implementing the 10 Essential Elements of Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems and the Ten State Actions to Ensure Effective Data Use[2], a set of elements and policy actions proposed to produce quality data systems and increase student achievement within each state.

Texas’s DQC Score16: 9/10

Texas has currently met each of the 10 essential elements:

  • Element 1 – Statewide student identifier
  • Element 2 – Student-level enrollment data
  • Element 3 – Student-level test data
  • Element 4 – Information on untested students
  • Element 5 – Statewide teacher identifier with a teacher-student match
  • Element 6 – Student-level course completion data
  • Element 7 – Student-level SAT, ACT, and Advanced Placement exam data
  • Element 8 – Student-level graduation and dropout data
  • Element 9 – Ability to match student-level P-12 and higher education data
  • Element 10 – State data audit system

Texas has currently met the following 9 state actions:

  • Linking state K-12 data systems with early learning, postsecondary, workforce, and other critical state agency data systems.
  • Create stable, sustained support for longitudinal data systems.
  • Developing governance structures to guide data collection and use.
  • Building state data repositories.
  • Creating reports with longitudinal statistics to guide system-level change.
  • Developing a purposeful research agenda.
  • Promoting strategies to raise awareness of available data.
  • Creating progress reports with student-level data for educators, students, and parents.
  • Implement policies and promote practices to build educator’s capacity to use data.

Texas has failed to meet the following 1 state actions:

  • Provide timely, role-based access to data.
    • Texas does not allow all parents, teachers, and appropriate stakeholders access to student level longitudinal data
[1] DQC’s annual survey, Data for Action (DFA), is a powerful tool to inform efforts in education to better use data in decision making. It is a series of analyses that highlight state progress and key priorities to promote the effective use of longitudinal data to improve student achievement
[2] DQC’s 10 Essential Elements of Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems and 10 State Actions to Ensure Effective Data Use provide a roadmap for state policymakers to create a culture of effective data use in which quality data are not only collected but also used to increase student achievement 16 DQC score determined by the number of state action items met by a state http://2pido73em67o3eytaq1cp8au.wpengine.netdnacdn.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/03/DataForAction2014_0.pdf
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Contact

Texas Education Agency
Public Information Requests
(512) 463-3464
1701 N. Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas 78701
Email: pir@tea.texas.gov

Research and Analysis Division, TPEIR Unit
Texas Education Agency
1701 North Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas 78701
Email: tpeir@tea.texas.gov

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
Contact: https://www1.thecb.state.tx.us/Apps/CRAFT/Home/Create

Texas Workforce Commission
Contact: http://www.twc.state.tx.us/contact-information

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Schematic

This schematic is offered to provide a simplified, visual presentation of the TPEIR and the channels through which data flows into and out of the SLDS. The entities on the far left side of the schematic represent the data record providers to the TPEIR. The entities in the middle of the schematic represent the TPEIR and public user portal. The entities on the far right side of the schematic represent the parties intended to receive benefits from the outputs generated by the TPEIR.

Texas

 

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State Response

SLDS stakeholders listed under Contacts (above) have been provided a copy of this State Profile and given an opportunity to provide comments in response.  No comments have been received for this state to date.

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