Los Angeles public schools have partnered with the L.A. Education Research Institute to open the district’s vast longitudinal-data system to identify successful practices that the district can expand.
The agreement will allow researchers open access to more than a decade of linked student, staff, and school data, including demographics, programs, course-taking, and student-achievement results from both tests and grades. It will also include school climate information from administrators, teachers, students, and parents.
Kyo Yamashiro, the executive director of the research group, said in a statement that its first focus will be on identifying skills and behaviors in students that act as “precursors to algebra success,” as well as “pinpoint pockets of success, where students who start out behind accelerate their progress.”
The 670,000-student Los Angeles district is one of a growing number of districts choosing to develop long-term partnerships with research groups to build their own research capacity, rather than waiting for individual researchers to come to them with one-off studies.
