AUSTIN – A $7.9 million federal grant will help Texas education agencies upgrade their data systems to allow them to evaluate the effectiveness of classroom instruction from kindergarten through college.

Texas is one of 27 states to receive a Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The Texas Education Agency will receive about $5.8 million and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board will receive about $2 million through this five-year grant.

“This project will allow the agency to continue in its current direction of evaluating the effectiveness of classroom interventions, education programs and teacher characteristics, including teacher preparation programs,” said Commissioner of Education Robert Scott.

TEA plans to expand the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS), which is already one of the oldest and largest education databases in the world, to include classroom-level information for students and teachers and to expand the collection of student-level course completion data.

TEA will also work with the Coordinating Board to expand the collection of student and faculty data in the Education Data Center (EDC) to include classroom level information and grades. This will provide a collection of continuous prekindergarten through university level information in the state’s existing data warehouse, while protecting the confidentiality of student and staff data.

School districts will be able to use the data to identify effective programs and to modify their curricula as necessary.

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Page last modified on 4/25/2010.