Chapter 3: Making Data Matter in Family Engagement

We believe that investment in student performance data that is accessible, meaningful, and actionable to families is a core component of 21^st century family engagement strategies. New data-sharing initiatives described here suggest that, equipped with student data, families can strengthen their roles as supporters of their children’s learning and as advocates for school improvement. Their experience offers a warrant for carefully developing and evaluating such efforts to learn how to implement them under different conditions and to ascertain their value added as part of larger efforts to make sure all children have the skills they need to succeed.

States and school districts have spent over one billion dollars in the last decade to build and implement student performance data systems (Tucker, 2010a). In addition, with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, 38 states are planning to build data systems that track the achievement of students by individual teachers. Thirty-seven states are working to align K-12 data systems and higher education to produce longitudinal data for individual students (Kober & Rentner, 2011). As policymakers invest in data systems to drive decision making from the classroom to the legislature, families are important stakeholders. Research on family engagement repeatedly correlates family engagement with student achievement and is discovering more precisely what it is that families do that promotes learning and school success. Sustained family engagement in children's learning is linked with higher grades and test scores, motivation to achieve, social competence, and aspiration for and enrollment in college (Weiss, Buffard, Bridgall, & Gordon, 2009).