Growing the Community Garden: Cultivating 619 Data Connections in New Jersey

A Date with Data

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### Episode Transcript ###
00:00:01.52 >> You're listening to "A Date With Data" with your host, Amy Bitterman.

00:00:07.34 >> Hey, it's Amy, and I am so excited to be hosting "A Date With Data." I'll be chatting with state and district special education staff who, just like you, are dealing with IDEA data every day.

00:00:19.50 >> "A Date With Data" is brought to you by the IDEA Data Center.

00:00:24.68 >> Welcome to "A Date With Data." Kim Murray, who is the Director Special Education, and Jennifer Nicosia, who is the 619 Coordinator with the New Jersey Department of Education, are here to share with us New Jersey's 619 data journey. So glad to have both of you here today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your role with New Jersey?

00:00:48.21 >> I've been the Director of the Office of Special Education for 2 years in February, so it's a rather new role for me, and it's exciting to be in it. But I have been with the Department in the Office of Special Ed for about 15 years, mostly on the compliance side monitoring complaint investigation and everything that comes with policy and procedure.

00:01:16.41 >> Great. Thank you. Jennifer?

00:01:18.77 >> Good morning. My name is Jennifer Nicosia, and I'm the 619 Coordinator for New Jersey, and I work with Kim in the Office of Special Education preschool. And what my position really means is that I support preschoolers ages 3 to 5 across the state who have individualized education programs. And on a day-to-day basis, that entails providing technical assistance and professional development and working with different organizations and agencies to support those students. I also have a background. I won't say how long, but let's say 20-plus years I was a special education teacher, and I worked for many years in public school system in special ed and preschool.

00:02:08.59 >> Great. Thank you both so much. So let's start off with the story of your 619 data, and, Kim, since you've been with the Special Education Office in the New Jersey Department of Education for such a long time, I'm wondering if you can just talk about some of the data quality challenges that have come up over the years and ways that you've all gone about addressing them.

00:02:32.28 >> Sure. I'd be happy to. With our 619 data, for the longest time, each program office had one data person who was in charge solely of collecting the data, verifying the data as valid and reliable and reporting the data. And that led to some really siloed work because that person was the only one who really had an in-depth understanding of the data and our data collection processes. So it was very hard to improve that when it was held with one person. In 2016, the Department created the Office of Fiscal and Data Services in our division, which, now we have a director who understands data, who loves data. She has a team working on the data, so we were able to pull together some more robust processes around data collection, data reporting, our data dashboards. So that piece has been great, and we're building on that work and the collaboration between the offices in terms of how we use the data and how they are collecting and analyzing the data. One of the issues that we have had with our LEA that they were struggling with submitting accurate data whether it was a lack of training. The staff member maybe who was inputting the data maybe wasn't someone familiar with the data, data system, so that was an issue. So we were seeing a lot of gaps in the data, incomplete data sets. Not every student would have a complete ... All the fields were completed, which means our data is not valid and reliable. So we've done a lot of training with specific districts. We've identified those who have the most issue with accurate data and making sure that they're getting some personal training and technical assistance to improve the quality of their data. And in terms of performance data, when we in general talk about Indicator 7, we had used the Battelle as our basis ...

00:04:55.00 >> Mm-hmm.

00:04:55.58 >> ... for our performance data. And what we were seeing is not many districts were using it, so the data set was getting smaller and smaller, and it wasn't really capturing what was happening in the preschool world for us. So now we've transferred over to the CODs, and we're building that up, which is great. And Jen has done an amazing job with ramping that up and improving the quality of data that we're collecting. Then we've also seen that the LEAs don't really have a connection to the data. They don't see the story the data is telling. So they submit it, and it's kind of, "We're done here. We've submitted it. We're not really analyzing it." So we've been doing a lot with building out data dashboards, making the data more accessible, more user-friendly, and then really explicitly stating the connections that the data has to program improvement and program development. And that's our goal, is to have the data really drive what's happening in terms of decision making and program improvement.

00:06:07.84 >> Yeah. That's a great strategy because if data are being collected for no real purpose or the LEAs can't see the purpose, then why are they going to put in so much effort to make sure it's of high quality? But if they see what it's being used for, how they can use it, how it can benefit them and their own students and families and teachers, then that just gives them more incentive, obviously, to make sure their data are accurate and of high quality.

00:06:35.14 >> Yeah, exactly. That's our goal.

00:06:37.62 >> What are some ways that you're working on strengthening New Jersey's 619 data culture?

00:06:43.40 >> So I think Kim told such an accurate story, since I'm here about a little over a year, if you could believe that.

00:06:49.99 >> Mm-hmm.

00:06:50.75 >> So she definitely told the story, and so by the time I came along, a lot of these things were in place. And so I was able to work with, under Kim's leadership and with the new monitors and the fiscal office and some of our colleagues who we could attest to absolutely love data and help to explain the why. So once we did that and we worked closely with the LEAs, what we were able to do was, through coaching, through a lot of technical assistance and professional development, we were able to really start to strengthen New Jersey's 619 data culture. And what I like to say is, so we have Alex Pensiero who works with us, and I would be remiss not to mention her because what she did was she actually makes data not scary.

00:07:43.68 >> Mm-hmm.

00:07:44.10 >> And so she's enabling us to work with all the LEAs across New Jersey and to change it from sort of being fearful of data, and once you understand the why and you start to understand the importance of the connections between everything that we're doing for preschool environment and least restrictive environment and then outcomes, it really starts to change the mindset, and it starts to really improve the data culture to be much more positive, I think similar to what Kim said talking about the why, tailoring the professional development, and having relationships that are really very positive with the local education agencies and especially the leadership of each district that's submitting data has allowed us to really significantly impact the work that we're getting. So clearly our processes are becoming stronger, but just the nature of the mindset, being comfortable talking about the data, and what does it really mean? And being honest, having those honest, open conversations, I think. And so some of the very specific ways that we've been able to change the data culture is by really sharing it and having things similar to what Kim meant. We have a dashboard where schools can go ahead and look at their data. We can provide technical assistance where we go ahead together with an LEA and look at their data and sort of analyze it and then figure out what it means. We have a few projects going on with some external stakeholders based off of the 619 data. And so I think what this does is it changes the culture by sharing our vision about meeting the needs of all children in early childhood.

00:09:42.64 >> Getting that data out there, getting the exposure, the transparency, and I like what you said, making it so it's not as scary or scary at all by kind of holding their hands and really walking through it w them so that they can understand it and be able to explain it themselves, is so, so important to building that strong data culture. Great, and what about moving forward? Do you have plans, any changes, new initiatives that you'll be putting in place to really continue on this journey of improving the quality of your 619 data?

00:10:19.93 >> Data quality is a priority for us, and it's ongoing, right? We're always building, seeing how we can do better, seeing how we can be more accessible. So in our office, everything we do is built on two foundational beliefs: equity and inclusion. And we don't make decisions without the data to back it up and to drive our initiatives forward. So when we're talking about inclusion in preschool, which is something that Jen and I hold very dear, and how we can improve our outcomes, we have external partners that we're working on around this, but the data is driving that.

00:11:02.09 >> Mm-hmm.

00:11:02.85 >> And that starts the conversation. When we meet with an LEA, here is your data. Let's talk about it. This is what it means. This is what we're seeing. These are your trends. So everything we do is around ... starts with a data review.

00:11:20.39 >> Mm-hmm.

00:11:21.02 >> And we imagine that will continue to do the same, right? That will continue to grow. We continue to work on data quality, whether it's Jennifer working with the system where we collect the Indicator 7 data. She's constantly refining that as we see where an LEA is struggling or they've identified sort of a work-around that we didn't know existed. We go in, and we fix that. So we make that system more robust. We're working on business rules to make sure that LEAs are submitting quality data and complete data sets. We work with our Office of Fiscal and Data Services to see how we can reimagine this data, how we can tell the story with the data and not just make it accessible for the LEAs. That's just one piece of our audience. But we have families who are interested in this and our external stakeholders and our advocacy groups. We see that sort of collective impact, everyone being on the same page and speaking the same story about the same data ... the data in the same way. That's how we can leverage our work, and that's how we can maximize our outcome. So we really are trying to develop this common language and common understanding around our data.

00:12:47.60 >> Yeah. I love that so much, just how you're being so thoughtful and intentional of thinking even just beyond the SEA and the districts but how critical it is that families and community and other stakeholders need to be at the table and understanding this data, too, and really part of the conversation.

00:13:09.26 >> And I think I would be remiss if I didn't say that we continue to engage in really nice conversations and professional development and training from IDC. We always ask for help on how we can improve our data, how we can make it better. We're very grateful for that because it has helped drive a lot of the improvements that we have seen in our data.

00:13:32.64 >> Great. Well, thank you, really appreciate that. Well, thank you both so much for spending some time chatting with me, doing some really great work in New Jersey, and love to hear what's happening next and what changes and how this is all going moving forward. So thank you for your time.

00:13:53.53 >> Thank you so much for having us.

00:13:55.74 >> Thank you.

00:13:58.30 >> To access podcast resources, submit questions related to today's episode or if you have ideas for future topics, we'd love to hear from you. The links are in the episode content. Or connect with us via the Podcast page on the IDC website at IDEAdata.org.