Via The Miami Herald comes a story that highlights a number of impacts of poor quality information in key processes.

In Oklahoma, schools are placed on an “improvement list” if they fail to meet standards for two consecutive years. Once on the list the school show progress in improving standards for two years before they can be taken off the list. This can have implications for funding and access to resources as well. Some Oklahoma School districts are, it is reported, concerned that they don’t make the grade against Federal requirements.

Problems with the quality of demographic data in electronic testing performed by Pearson has affected the publication of the reports against which schools are graded.  These will now be available a full month late, being released in September and not August as expected. This will affect the ability of School Boards to effectively respond to their report card.

Other problems reported on top of missed deadlines include errors in printing report cards to be sent to parents

Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Schools Janet Barresi has described the impacts of poor quality data in this process as a “ripple effect”  that is “imposing an unacceptable burden on school districts” and has called for Pearson’s contract to be reviewed. Pearson are engaging an independent 3rd party to help verify the accuracy and validity of the scoring data (which they are confident in).

Oklahoma is not the first State where data issues have been a problem.

• In 2010 in Florida Pearson was penalised $14.7 million, and had to ramp up staffing levels and make changes to systems as a result of problems with information quality leading to delays. The problems here related to matching of student records.
• In 2010 in Wyoming, Pearson also had to pay penalties arising from problems with the testing, ranging from data going missing to other administrative problems such as improperly calibrated protractors.

This video from the Data Quality Campaign, a US Non-Profit working to improve standards of data quality in the US Education system, highlights the value of good quality and timely information in this important sector: