May 24, 2010

Commonwealth Awarded $14.3 Million in Federal Stimulus Funds to Improve Education Data Systems
Enhanced Systems will Help Guide Policymakers, Education Professionals

Harrisburg – Pennsylvania will receive $14.3 million in competitively-awarded federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to expand and enhance information systems that help improve education, acting Education Secretary Thomas E. Gluck said today.

“Pennsylvania’s policymakers and educators have long recognized the need for high quality, reliable and accessible data to help guide their decisions and practices,” Gluck said. “These additional funds will allow us to expand our current data system to include early and higher education students so we can track progress through the entire education system. We will be able to see what programs work and lead to greater student success.”

Pennsylvania was one of 20 states to receive a combined $250 million from the Recovery Act to support development and implementation of data systems to examine student progress from early childhood into college. The Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) grants will help deliver much-needed data into the hands of educators and policymakers. All 50 states submitted applications.

“In three short years, we have gone from having no comprehensive SLDS to becoming a national leader in this regard,” Governor Rendell said in the state’s application last fall. In 2008, the Data Quality Campaign, a national collaborative campaign to improve the collection, availability and use of high quality education data, awarded Governor Rendell and former Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak its annual Leadership Award.

The federal Recovery Act funds will help accelerate ongoing efforts to provide policymakers, local education officials, teachers, parents and students with timely, understandable and usable data upon which to make decisions, at the same time protecting privacy and confidentiality.

For more information on how Recovery Act funds are being invested in Pennsylvania, visit www.recovery.pa.gov.

Media contacts:
Steve Weitzman, PDE; 717-783-9802
Gary Tuma, Governor’s Office; 717-783-1116

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