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Receiving timely data about the students and ������Ƶ City Year serves is crucial to understand how well we are supporting learning conditions and outcomes and make continuous improvements to our services and approach.

Often, though, getting that information from school partners is much more difficult than expected, because data information sharing is simply not designed for this kind of collaboration—a widespread problem shared by many nonprofit partners who work in education systems.

“We all are committed to improve and innovate, yet we each use a different data picture,” said City Year Chief Transformation Officer Stephanie Wu, “which dilutes our collective impact due to a lack of shared measures and insights.”

A smart solution, argues Education Analytics, would be creating a shared data infrastructure.

City Year’s Transformation Team, including Research and Evaluation, collaborated with Education Analytics on a new essay that explores “what parts of the data infrastructure [from ������Ƶ] should be shared, standardized, and reusable so that more organizations can focus on serving students.”

City Year as a case study

Using City Year as a case study, the blog highlighting the challenges faced by education nonprofits to access timely, relevant student information from school districts—not because of a lack of willingness but rather a flawed infrastructure that makes it difficult and time consuming for school districts to extract specific data points and share them with nonprofit partners.

“A shared data infrastructure would accelerate our ability to do continuous improvement work,” said City Year Senior Vice President of Data and Evaluation Kris DePedro, “including equipping our corps members with real-time student data to make decisions in a school. It would also help us generate longitudinal data to assess our impact on student outcomes.”

Excerpt

Case study: Data challenges

In some sites, City Year data analysts are facing steep challenges with data, reporting difficulty with connecting with school districts, delays receiving student performance data, or receiving information so late in the school year, it’s not useful anymore.

“A lot of time and energy—on both sides—goes into communicating with a partner district about student data. We often have to make multiple requests in a single school year, and some requests even involve pulling the principal or assistant principal from their day for a couple of hours to pull reports, which isn’t an efficient use of their time, either.” –Andie Houle, City Year impact data analyst

Case study: Data in action

“Student data allows us to monitor progress, identify areas of need, and make informed decisions that maximize our impact in ������Ƶ. When data is accurate and accessible, we can better collaborate with school partners, adjust interventions, and celebrate student growth throughout the year.” –Chenera Ash, City Year Columbia impact director

While receiving processed data from school partners continues to be a challenge, Ash said that her school partners have been “instrumental in supporting our efforts by providing as much raw data as possible. This allows us to facilitate targeted trainings, develop meaningful resources, and equip our AmeriCorps members with the information they need to excel in both their student academic interventions and whole child initiatives.”

The work ahead is not simple, and the direction is clear. Common standards, governed access, reusable data models, and a commitment to public-good infrastructure make responsible data use possible at scale. For school-based nonprofits, this is part of what equitable, high-quality student support requires.

A shared data infrastructure builds clarity, trust and improved outcomes

Ed Analytics’ Dan Jarratt argues that building a shared infrastructure would achieve four goals:

1. Reduces the burden on school districts to respond to customized data requests
2. Creates shared foundation for school site staff, who can then receive timely data on attendance, grades and behavior, and adjust their interventions and supports for those students accordingly
3. Supports broader organizational learning, because when data is standardized and documented, teams like City Year’s staff can produce reports and compare patterns across sites while preserving local context
4. Improves governance and trust. A shared infrastructure model clarifies who can see what data, for what reason, and with what safeguards—a critical factor when data is used across school systems, nonprofit organizations, researchers, funders and public agencies

A shared data infrastructure system will enable school districts to work with partners more safely and efficiently. Nonprofits like City Year can target support for students and ������Ƶ and learn faster. Researchers can ask better questions. Funders can understand impact more fully. Students, ultimately, benefit from the adults supporting them when those adults are “better coordinated, better informed and better able to respond,” Jarrett says.