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With one computer keystroke, officials in North Carolina鈥檚 Guilford County school district can see which students are at risk of dropping out years before it might happen. They can check class attendance, current grades, and past years鈥� grades. They can see whether a student is older than his or her classmates, and whether that student lags behind in credits earned.

The district鈥檚 advanced data system analyzes those factors and pinpoints which students may not make it to graduation. Principals and teachers then design customized learning plans to help students earn a diploma. The 72,300-student district鈥檚 dropout rate is 3 percent鈥攐ne of the lowest among large districts in the state.

鈥淚f we didn鈥檛 have the capacity to target and identify these students, we would not be able to provide them with resources and customized scheduling,鈥� says Terrence Young, the district鈥檚 chief information officer. 鈥淒ata is certainly a driving factor behind our low dropout rate.鈥�

The federal requires districts to track student achievement and slice and dice the data into different subgroups. Since the measure was signed into law six years ago, school officials have moved to pay more attention to data systems and the information those systems can provide to help with everything from streamlining district operations to raising test scores. States, too, have begun instituting their own education data systems, and experts see a culture shift in a field that once put the idea of analytic data systems low on a list of priorities.

鈥淯nless you have the capacity to analyze this data,鈥� Young says, 鈥測ou鈥檙e data-rich, but information-poor.鈥�

But the push to put high-quality data systems in place has been slow, says Aimee R. Guidera, the director of the Austin, Texas-based . Her organization was established two years ago to call more attention to the issue of data collection by districts and states and to improve the quality of the data.

鈥淎s more and more conversations took place about alignment for state standards and high school exit exams and college-entry standards and high school rigor, 鈥� all the discussions couldn鈥檛 be informed because we didn鈥檛 have access to that information,鈥� Guidera says. 鈥淒ata is the least sexy of all issues, and nobody wanted to talk about it.鈥�

The Data Quality Campaign focuses mostly on state data systems, and a progress report from the organization released in November found that states are moving forward. The report found that 47 states have data systems in place that include five or more essential elements for success identified by the organization. Some of those elements include the ability to track student test scores from year to year, having an individual student-identification system, and the ability to match students with their teachers.

But it鈥檚 difficult to determine how districts are faring in their efforts. The U.S. Department of Education is in the process of interviewing officials in 500 districts to evaluate the capabilities of their data systems, says Timothy J. Magner, the director of the office of educational technology at the department.

鈥淲e鈥檙e really seeing a culture change,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 been a seat-of-the-pants decisionmaking process until recently because getting access to data and analyzing it has been so difficult. Now we have the tools and the technology that allow us to get at data in a more structured, timely, organized fashion, creating a culture of continuous improvement.鈥�

Several types of data can be collected, often with different systems, Magner says. One type involves the instructional side of the district. Once such data are collected, systems have the ability to drill down to the student level and analyze factors that may affect individual performance. 鈥淵ou can look at trends among individual students, buildings, and programs,鈥� Magner says.

His surveys so far have found progress in some districts when it comes to analyzing student data, he says, as well as the automation of time-consuming processes, allowing districts to use personnel more efficiently.

Automated data systems that collect attendance records, for example, can free up employees to do jobs that focus more on students instead of on data entry, Magner says. And data systems that collect a variety of information on students鈥攆rom the length of their bus rides to the books they check out of the library to the meals they eat鈥攃an help educators draw connections between those factors and student achievement.

鈥淪chools can understand earlier in the process how a student is faring and why,鈥� Magner says. 鈥淭he results can come back quickly, and educators can intervene.鈥�

In Minnesota鈥檚 40,000-student Anoka-Hennepin district just north of Minneapolis, officials are using their data system in a variety of ways. At the start of the 2007-08 school year, every teacher used the system to look at student demographics, enrollment, testing, academic history, grades, and attendance.

鈥淲e actually have a complete student-summary report which includes 90 percent of the data that used to be in the paper folder,鈥� says Georgia Kedrowski, the district鈥檚 assistant director of technology. 鈥淎 teacher can drill down and find a group of students who need intervention programs.

鈥淲e鈥檝e eliminated a lot of the barriers to using data, because it鈥檚 fast and it鈥檚 easy. Teachers are loving it,鈥� Kedrowski says.

Anoka-Hennepin is using an outside vendor, the Central Minnesota Educational Research and Development Council, or cmERDC, a nonprofit organization based in St. Cloud, Minn., to provide its data system, called Viewpoint. Many districts around the country hire outside companies to put data-warehousing systems in place, though some build their own. Still others are using data systems provided by the state education agency.

Anoka-Hennepin went with an outside provider because the district had few resources to devote to the effort, including staff and money, and didn鈥檛 have the technical capacity to develop a homegrown system, Kedrowski says.

But Kedrowski says an earlier version of the system had kinks that had to be worked out. 鈥淚t was not as technically sound or easy to use,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he first and most difficult thing for any district is to be able to supply good data to the data structure.鈥�

Though it sounds simple, one of the most challenging problems for districts is ensuring that each student has a unique identification number that sticks with him or her through an entire school career, Kedrowski says. In Minnesota, for example, students have a state identification number and a local identification number. Sometimes a student鈥檚 name may be entered as 鈥淢ike鈥� and at other times as 鈥淢ichael,鈥� resulting in several different entries for the same student. Transfers between schools or districts also can sometimes confuse the system, Kedrowski says.

鈥淓very time you have a piece of data, you must make sure you鈥檙e using the same unique ID,鈥� she says. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 do that and people look at the data and it doesn鈥檛 match up with the student, you lose credibility so fast. If that happens, you spent an awful lot of time and money, and people won鈥檛 use the system because they don鈥檛 trust it.鈥�

A study released in November by the University of Texas at Austin of data use in the 11,500-student Natrona County school district in Casper, Wyo., found a series of problems, including a lack of integration among data systems and issues with accuracy. 鈥淲e heard many instances of groups that did not trust student demographic data provided by the district, sometimes to the point of maintaining their own databases,鈥� the report found.

Shawn T. Bay, the founder and chief executive officer of White Plains, N.Y.-based eScholar, which provides educational-data-warehousing systems to districts and state education agencies, calls schools 鈥渢he most difficult data environment I鈥檝e ever worked in.鈥�

Accuracy, he says, is crucial. 鈥淵ou think everybody needs accuracy, but in some industries if you鈥檙e plus or minus a couple of units, it鈥檚 OK,鈥� Bay says. 鈥淏ut in school districts, you鈥檙e trying to help individual children. If you get their test results attached to someone else, you鈥檝e made a big mistake.鈥�

Data systems also must be able to talk to each other. In a school district, there are likely to be different systems for different purposes, such as collecting attendance, tracking special education students, and gathering test scores. A system that isn鈥檛 able to tap into all that information simultaneously and compare and analyze it won鈥檛 provide the answers teachers and administrators are seeking, Bay says.

鈥淚t needs to be that as soon as you can think about a question, you can get answers, and you don鈥檛 get sidetracked when you go to get the data, so that you never get to the conclusion and aren鈥檛 able to take action,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his way, you can ask some really interesting, deep, probing questions.鈥�

Districts also have to be sure that teachers and administrators get the training they need not only to use the system, but also interpret the resulting trove of data.

In North Carolina鈥檚 Guilford County district, Young says, the data system provided staff members with information in a format that used Excel spreadsheets. 鈥淲e quickly realized who could use Excel and who couldn鈥檛,鈥� he says. The district later instituted Excel training to fill the skill void that existed.

Despite the new depth of understanding that data systems can provide to school officials, Magner of the federal Education Department cautions that they are just tools to be used when thinking about how to help a student achieve. Students are not just test scores on paper, or demographic statistics.

鈥淚t鈥檚 important to recognize that we鈥檙e talking about kids here, and we shouldn鈥檛 reduce them to data,鈥� says Magner. 鈥淏ut this information gives teachers, policymakers, and education professionals information they can use to reflect on the experiences they鈥檙e seeing with an individual.鈥�