CNA Education

CNA's award-winning Education Team brings together diverse academic disciplines and a wealth of experience in conducting research and analysis, evaluating programs, and providing technical assistance. Our work is customized to the needs of our clients, and our approach is flexible, so that we can adjust to different environments and changing circumstances.

CNA Education has an established record of helping to improve the quality of education in America by providing critical decision-making support to policymakers, educators, researchers, stakeholders, parents, and students. Our approach combines the scientific rigor of a research institution with a practical, firsthand understanding of education issues and policies and their real-world implications. A fundamental goal is to help educators and executives make better use of research and data to improve their ability to make sound decisions. Our areas of experience include education technology, teacher recruitment and retention, program evaluation, school safety and security, home schooling and later job performance, education reform, non-traditional education alternatives, and post-secondary mathematics education.

Using sophisticated scientific, operational, and policy analysis tools in concert with practical experience, CNA Education works with a variety of education entities, ranging from individual schools and districts, to state and federal policymakers and program managers, to improve the quality of education. CNA Education holds grants and contracts from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, private foundations and associations, and local school districts.

Making Effective Use of Longitudinal Education Databases

Issue: Educators at all levels recognize the need to track students, teachers, and schools over time. The recent stimulus bill alone includes $250 million in grants for states to develop or improve their longitudinal databases. The need for good longitudinal data is not disputed and the investments in database capability have already been substantial. Why, then, have longitudinal data not had more influence on educational policy and practice?

The call of compliance. State and local education agencies are often compelled to focus more on regulatory compliance and less on policy and practice.

Analytical capability. Making use of longitudinal data requires time and considerable technical expertise often absent from those with ready access to the data.

Segmentation of data. Student records from K-12, post-secondary schooling, and employment; teacher records; and financial and other school-based information often are not linked into a single integrated system.

Data quality. Databases may contain errors that are not apparent in standard reports, which reduce the value of any resulting analysis for policy or practice.

Adding Value: An analytical perspective can increase the value of longitudinal databases by aligning their development with some key potential uses. Analysts can help to establish requirements, assure quality, and develop applications to make these databases more comprehensive, accurate, and relevant to education policy and practice.

Planning. Design teams usually include database managers, technology experts, and perhaps a program or policy specialist. Analysts rarely participate. And yet, a key reason to create these databases is to enable the kind of analysis that informs policy and practice. Adding an analyst to these teams will help identify a fuller range of functional requirements and potential applications that will maximize the data system's value.

Construction. Routine data cleaning algorithms are often imperfect, leaving numerous errors in longitudinal files. Because analysts cross check data elements for internal consistency, they can discover problems that data cleaning algorithms miss. Analytical participation in the validation and verification process improves data quality.

Post-Development Use. When given access to longitudinal databases, analysts can support leadership in state and local education agencies with policy and program development and evaluation as well as help shape practice by teachers and staff. A careful examination of such data can identify problems, clarify options, and shape solutions in both policy and practice.

CNA Education has over 25 years of experience building and analyzing longitudinal databases on a wide range of topics in education and other areas. For example, we have:

• Developed models that enhance the use of assessment scores for identifying students at risk for academic failure
• Assessed the impact of pay on teacher retention and the impact of teacher professional development on student outcomes
• Identified pathways for students with different levels of high school performance through post-secondary schooling and into good jobs

CNA Education can partner with state and local agencies to plan and build better longitudinal databases, improve data quality, and make more effective use of the resulting integrated data.