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Office of the State Superintendent of Education
 

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Course Data Collection Guidance for Local Education Agencies (LEAs)

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is committed to supporting all learners in DC, especially those furthest from opportunity, by ensuring that they have equal access to excellent educators, as well as appropriate and high-quality coursework and learning environments. Course data collection will support an equitable education system by allowing OSSE, its partners, and policymakers to better understand courses schools offer, who is teaching each course and how students are performing. Additionally, OSSE will use course data to provide information to families so they can make informed decisions about their child’s education.

In order to do this work, OSSE must work collaboratively with local education agencies (LEAs) to understand the realities of the student experience in DC, including the courses they take and the educators who serve them. Course data will be used to strategically provide professional learning to school staff and find and highlight bright spots across the District’s education system. The statewide course data collection process will also enable OSSE to better perform its core compliance and monitoring functions and streamline data collection processes.

OSSE has established a Data Access and Use Policy that specifically governs how the course data may be used:

  • Public Reporting: At this time, there are no legislated public reporting requirements – and OSSE has not made any commitments to publicly reporting course data, either. OSSE has begun to answer some data requests, such as a request for high school course catalog data from the DC Public Charter School Board (PCSB), which will replace their annual course catalog collection, and we have started to explore including course catalog data on the DC School Report Card (pursuant to the DC State Board of Education SR24-5) as soon as December 2025. OSSE anticipates that there will be reasons to publicly report course data within the next few years.
  • LEA-Facing Reporting: LEAs have access to all individual and aggregate data they have submitted to OSSE through an OSSE data visualization tool (such as Qlik). PCSB also has access to course data from charter schools so that they do not have to request duplicative course catalogs or transcript data.
  • Data Sharing with Third Parties: Disclosing data in any other way (including individual-level data) with third parties, including other District agencies, as agreed to through the data request process, shall follow OSSE best practices, including the requirement for a data sharing agreement (DSA) and adherence to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

OSSE will provide training and technical assistance to all LEAs to ensure they meet reporting requirements accurately and on time. OSSE will collect Course Catalog Collection data via Integrated Data Submission (IDS) tool from July through September and will administer the Student and Section Course Data Collection via Automated Data Transfer (ADT), with the collection, validation and certification dates aligned with Data Validation Enrollment, Attendance and Discipline Data Review Windows. OSSE will continue to iterate on the collection process with the goal of making the collection process as low of an administrative lift for LEAs as possible, while providing education stakeholders with accurate and actionable data.

2025-26 School Year

 

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