Making Connections for Youth in Washington State: The Role of Data in Developing Sound Public Policy

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February 2008
Dan Goldhaber

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CRPE Working Paper #2008-1

This paper discusses the need for adequate, carefully structured data in order to make any broad-based, student-outcome-related judgments about interventions related to teachers.

Given the vast amounts of data that the state collects about students and their teachers, it is possible to empirically answer questions about the value of educational investments in youth with a reasonable degree of certainty. But it is far easier to say that investments in children should be judged against their impact on measured student learning than it is to do so, because doing so requires a data structure that supports careful empirical analyses.

In particular, any broad-based, student-outcome-related judgments that are made about interventions related to teachers (for example, the effectiveness of teacher training, professional development, licenses, or certificates) requires that data on student outcomes be linked directly to data on teachers at the individual student-teacher level.

Why is this necessary? Simply put, it is not possible to draw credible student-outcome-based inferences about various policies unless the available data match teachers to their individual students. In the absence of such a linkage, one does not know how to assign particular student outcomes to particular teachers, which in turn means that it’s not possible to determine how or whether students have been educationally influenced by teachers who hold specific credentials or training.