In educational news – The question of what happens to Guam Department of Education Graduates after receiving their diploma will be answered with GDOE’s newest initiative to track students post-graduation.
PNC’s Damen Michael has this story
GDOE’s Research, Planning, and Evaluation Division secured a $3.25 million grant from the US Department of education’s national center for education statistics to build Guam’s One Stop Data Village.
GDOE describes GOSDV’s initiative as Guam’s statewide longitudinal data system which looks to link GDOE’s pre-kindergarten to 12th-grade student information with post-secondary student data from the University of Guam and the Guam community college.
Additionally, SLDS is a combination of data that answers critical questions about education specifically students transitioning from elementary throughout the education system to post-secondary education or workforce and beyond.
Dr. Zenaida Napa Natividad, Project Director for Guam One Stop Data Village Division said, ” We have data from the k-12 system, demographics, student attendance, and discipline and assessment data, all kinds of data that we already collect from within our department as well as data that UOG and GCC already collect .”
Dr. Natividad added that using this data they will be able to track where DOE students are and track their current ongoings.
Chris Graves, VP of Project Management for BryteBites told PNC that accuracy isn’t the main focus of this database but instead being able to compile the data in a seamless solution for easier access. He added afterward it’s about rationalizing and cleaning the data to develop an organized structure.
Dr. Natividad added that data does go through rigorous data quality control checks to make sure each variable is complete and accurate.
In an interview with PNC Graves told explained how their database systems have helped other educational institutions.
He said, ” So we’ve seen this initiative undertaken across many large school districts in the united states and state DOE and everyone is pursuing the same goal it how we improve the outcome for the students that we serve and you’re seeing positive effects from other states to improved high school graduation rate, ti improved accreditation attainment at your 2 – 4 year institutions, and just overall improved emotional and social well being of our students so they can be contributing safe members of our society.”
Yesterday the Guam Education board approved the GOSDV initiative. PNC reached out to Mark Mendiola, Chairman of the GEB who said, “we are very grateful for the team that brought up this concept and developed it to where it is today. this is the start of a longitudinal study that is going to benefit the whole island community in terms of education, going into the workforce, and meaningful data that could help drive policy decisions.”
He added it’s an opportunity to build upon this project to benefit future generations with historical data and institutional knowledge.
Reporting for the Pacific News Center
I’m Damen Michael
