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Data Tools

The REL Mid-Atlantic develops tools to address the pressing needs of our stakeholders.

Automated Teacher Diversity District Tool

The automated teacher diversity district tool is designed to help state education agency staff support districts in identifying gaps in the diversity of their teacher workforces. It is an automated version of the prior Teacher Diversity District Tool. The automated tool generates district-level reports that provide the racial/ethnic make-up of a district's student and teacher populations and its three- and five-year teacher retention rates by race and ethnicity. The template can be used to prepare reports for any number of districts. Inputting the data could take as little as 30 minutes if the data are readily available. After gathering and entering the necessary data, the tool takes one to two minutes to generate district reports.

The automated teacher diversity district tool includes four components:

  1. Instructions document (66 KB): Provides an explanation of how to compile the data and produce the district reports.
  2. Teacher diversity district report data table in Excel (516 KB): This file is used by state education agency staff to compile the data for each district.
  3. Teacher diversity tool (67 KB): This file uses the data from the teacher diversity district report data table Excel file to automatically generate reports by district showing the diversity of each district's teacher workforce and retention rates.
  4. Teacher diversity district report in Word (42 KB): This reporting template contains the text and figures generated by the tool with updated information for each district.

Teacher Diversity District Tool

The teacher diversity district tool is designed to help state education agency staff support districts in identifying gaps in the diversity of their teacher workforces. The tool generates district-level reports that provide the racial/ethnic make-up of a district's student and teacher populations and its three- and five-year teacher retention rates by race and ethnicity. The template can be used to prepare reports for any number of districts but is intended to produce reports for around 20 to 30 districts. For 20 to 30 districts, the template will take approximately two to three hours to use, depending on the availability of the necessary data. For a larger number of districts, the template may take substantially longer to use.

The teacher diversity district tool includes three components:

  1. Instructions document (59 KB): Provides an explanation of how to compile the data and produce the district reports.
  2. Teacher diversity district report data table in Excel (170 KB): This file is used by state education agency staff to compile the data for each district.
  3. Teacher diversity district report in Word (107 KB): This reporting template uses the data from the Teacher diversity district report data table Excel file to summarize the diversity of each district's teacher workforce and retention rates.

Go-Learn-Grow: Improving the School Attendance of New Jersey’s Youngest Learners

Chronic absenteeism is particularly high in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, compared with elementary and middle school. For a young child to succeed and develop a strong foundation for learning, he or she must attend school regularly. U.S. Department of Education’s Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Mid-Atlantic has partnered with the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) to provide support of their initiative called Go-Learn-Grow: Improving the School Attendance of New Jersey’s Youngest Learners.

NJDOE and REL Mid-Atlantic created this toolkit Strategies for Improving Attendance in Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten: Toolkit for Districts, Schools, and Early Childhood Providers, with simple, easy-to-use resources and handouts to support districts, schools, and early childhood providers in improving school attendance in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. The goals of these materials are to:

  • Help educators and families understand the importance of attendance in the early grades
  • Encourage schools to gather and include data on preschool students when reporting chronic absenteeism rates on school report cards
  • Help schools collect information from families to help identify reasons for absenteeism in the early grades
  • Provide guidance on selecting and implementing research-based strategies to improve attendance in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, based on the identified challenges

Collect and Analyze Data

REL Mid-Atlantic developed this tool to help users pool and summarize data with everyday programs like MS Excel, Google Drive, and Google Forms complete with step-by-step instructions. Pottstown School District asked REL Mid-Atlantic for help in improving the process of collecting data required for reporting and accountability. Specifically, the district was looking for solutions to overcoming the challenges of entering data manually from paper forms, obtaining data from online systems in a usable format, and automating agencies' and foundations' reporting requirements.

Access State Longitudinal Data Systems

Teachers, principals, administrators, and analysts looking for ways to access data, improve reporting, and increase efficiency may use these templates to access, read, and interpret data from State Longitudinal Data Systems. These tools, developed by REL Mid-Atlantic, help to automate processes and document connections to relational databases. Specifically, you'll learn how to connect to data warehouse environments and how to automate Excel, SPSS, and SAS routines in a Windows environment using Task Scheduler.

Implementing Database Connections

Automating Data Acquisition

Collect Data on Student Backgrounds and Interests

Get to know your students' interests, activities outside the school, and home life with this simple Excel template. This spreadsheet was inspired by the “I wish my teacher knew…” movement which gave students an opportunity to express needs that are not measured by standard student data collection methods.