The project involves multiple units across the district including Instructional Services, Workforce Education, Student Support Services, Research Analytics & Decision Support, Information Technology, and the Colleges. Stakeholders from each unit collaborate to develop appropriate data-informed initiatives designed to enhance students success. Ideally, we will expand capacity to get data into the hands of people who can use it while supporting analytical rigor.

Databases and data dashboards have been developed by the RADS office to help different programs assess trends across different groups including by race/ethnicity, gender, age, part-time/full-time status, loan recipients, etc. These databases and tools are used locally and to inform analyses on Achieving the Dream and Texas Pathways evaluation activities.

Multiple methods are utilized to assess and evaluate impacts including quantitative and qualitative analytic approaches.

The purpose of this meta-project is to 1) identify or develop and implement data-informed initiatives that address the needs of a diverse population of students and 2) apply an evaluative framework to these activities to measure impacts. An additional focus of this process is to identify data needs that will lead to new and refined measures and enhanced data collection strategies and procedures.

The primary lesson, which forms the basis for this project, is that data are only useful if they lead to action.