OLYMPIA — A new data warehouse system that will help inform education decisions from the school level to the state level is now online, Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn announced today.

Currently, data is collected for two main reasons: to comply with state and federal laws, and to determine how much money schools and districts receive. The new system, K-12 Data and Reports, will collect smaller data sets and begin a shift toward using data to better inform decisions at all levels.

Dorn praised another benefit of the new system: transparency. “We have a lot of data on our Web site,” Dorn said, “but this new system will be able to bring it all together in a way that makes sense to the average person.”

This first phase release of the warehouse system is composed of data sets in the following subjects:

·         Educators (years of experience, type of teaching endorsement, salary, etc.)
·         Finance
·         Directory (addresses of schools, administrative buildings, etc.)

The second phase release this spring of the system will include student and assessment data.
The K-12 Data and Reports system collects each set into a larger system, allowing any user to create charts and graphs from data that was previously in different sections and in different formats. In the future, the new system will connect with a P-20 data system being developed by the Education Research and Data Center.