OMB83C SLDS Webinars Change Memo

Memorandum United States Department of Education

Institute of Education Sciences

National Center for Education Statistics

DATE: May 30, 2017

TO: Robert Sivinski and E. Ann Carson, OMB

THROUGH: Kashka Kubzdela, OMB Liaison, NCES

FROM: Nancy Sharkey, SLDS Program Officer, NCES

Kristen King, SLDS Program Officer, NCES

SUBJECT: Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) Survey 2017-2019 Webinars Change Request (OMB# 1850-0933 v.3)

As authorized by the Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002, Title II, the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program has awarded competitive, cooperative agreement grants to states since 2005. Through grants and a growing range of services and resources, the program has helped propel the successful design, development, implementation, and expansion of K12 and P-20W (early learning through the workforce) longitudinal data systems. These systems are intended to enhance the ability of States to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records. The SLDSs should help states, districts, schools, educators, and other stakeholders to make data-informed decisions to improve student learning and outcomes; as well as to facilitate research to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps. The SLDS grants extend for three to five years for up to twenty million dollars per grantee, and grantees are obligated to submit annual reports and a final report on the development and implementation of their systems. All 50 states, five territories, and the District of Columbia are eligible to apply, and each state can apply multiple times to develop different aspects of their data system. Since November 2005, 97 grants have been awarded. In addition to the grants, the program offers many services and resources to assist education agencies with SLDS-related work. Best practices, lessons learned, and non-proprietary products/solutions developed by recipients of these grants and other states are disseminated to aid all state and local education agencies. The request to formalize the annual SLDS Interim Progress Report (IPR) as the SLDS Survey, intended to provide insight on state and U.S. territory SLDS capacity for automated linking of K-12, teacher, postsecondary, workforce, career and technical education (CTE), adult education, and early childhood data, and to conduct the annual SLDS Survey from 2017 through 2019 was approved in February 2017 (1850-0933 v.1) with small changes to the survey instrument approved in May 2017 (1850-0933 v.2). The SLDS Survey will help inform ongoing evaluation and targeted technical assistance efforts to enhance the quality of the SLDS Program’s support to states.

This request is to allow NCES the option to host one to two webinars annually (April – June 15^th) with state respondents, on an as needed basis, to provide more information about the Survey, on how to complete the instrument, NCES’s planned use of the data, and to answer any questions from state participants.

This request has an associated increase in the estimated respondent burden of 30 minutes per respondent annually, to account for the possible voluntary participation of each of the 56 jurisdictions in an information webinar. The table reflecting the estimated respondent burden for the SLDS Survey has been updated in the Supporting Statement Part A, section 12. Also, short description of the webinars was added to the Supporting Statement Parts A and B, along with small schedule adjustments, and the content of the webinar has been added to Appendix A.

This request does not impact the approved total cost to the federal government.