U.S. school systems are crafting new approaches to desegregation in response to increasing evidence of growing racial isolation and strong evidence of the value of integration. Assuring the success of these initiatives, including creating and sustaining community support, requires clear thinking about measurement and evaluation. And while translating the rich body of integration-related social science research to actionable evaluation can be daunting, avoiding simple “box score” approaches to integration measures can help districts achieve deep, sustainable reform. We, therefore, propose a framework for evaluating broad-scale desegregation initiatives that considers:
- Integration Policy Implementation: the barriers and facilitators of policy adoption
- Integration Policy Outputs: the immediate, multi-layered outputs of policy implementation (the “box score” done better)
- Integration Policy Outcomes: student achievement, critical thinking, school connectedness, school climate, and community support
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is designed to protect students and families from unlawful use and release of private data. It firmly undergirds how Arroyo Research Services handles data confidentiality and security, and it most often requires strict de-identification and/or prior written consent, if any access is allowed, before data is provided to third parties for the purposes of independent research.
Unfortunately, we find FERPA is often misinterpreted to mean that identifiable or non-consented data may never be released. That’s not actually the case. (more…)
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