CCER’s data and research principles are currently under revision. Our new data and research principles are grounded in liberatory approaches to data and research. CCER’s data and research team intends to support regional change through partnerships, transparent data, rigorous methods, and accessible tools. The team collaborates with partners to 1) provide regional annual reporting on system and student measures highlighting collective progress toward Road Map Project goals, 2) support continuous improvement initiatives by providing periodic descriptive reporting and strategy-area progress toward initiative goals and 3) conduct research that examines “why” and “how” questions to expose causal factors underlying student outcomes, inform strategy, and improve regional base knowledge. Given data’s potential to harm our communities of color, we must actively disrupt white-dominant norms and power dynamics across data and research strategies, resources, relationships, approaches, analyses, data stewardship, and impact. In order to do work embedded in racial equity, our:

Projects must align with CCER’s emerging anti-racism strategies

  • Center community and lead with race
  • Achieve a work portfolio that serves families, direct service providers, and community members more than large, well-resourced stakeholders
  • Examine unintended consequences across our work from project launch to report release
  • Avoid work that is misaligned to CCER’s role, values, and staff expertise and collaborate, as appropriate, with those in the best roles to perform work (e.g. data to support direct service provision, resource development that should be owned by partners, or evaluation that should be performed by an objective third-party)
  • Create data and reporting products that are informed by, accessible to, and useful for community

Resources and staff time must be used to uplift communities of color and to decenter whiteness

  • Achieve data and research funding that is flexible, aligns to values, and is co-developed with community or school partners
  • Negotiate grant measurement requirements to center measurement of systems change through qualitative or non-academic data—rather than solely tracking impact through secondary, student academic outcomes
  • Decline or minimize time-consuming and ineffective reporting efforts to allow for deeper work on projects that have the power to transform the structural causes of inequity

Relationships must be mutual and work to build community trust and accountability

  • Work iteratively with requesting partner for the lifespan of a project or request
  • Integrate youth and young adults in projects to inform our work
  • Integrate community engagement strategies and build data support into relationship development with community groups, where appropriate

Approaches and analyses must center communities, improve data access and expose systemic barriers for action

  • Pursue actionable questions from those most impacted and participate in research by (and in support of) underrepresented communities
  • Honor qualitative data that highlights lived experiences and use secondary data to reveal how white-dominant systems benefit
  • Highlight systems-level findings, not exceptionalism or student deficits
  • Provide data and research that highlights existing successes, and illuminates the potential of outcome goals that are defined by communities of color
  • Practice data transparency by communicating methods and developing open-source materials
  • Disaggregate data appropriately and to the fullest extent possible

Data use must be grounded in ethical and responsive data stewardship

  • Ensure the integrity of student data
  • Protect student privacy—data practices (transferring, storing, processing, presenting, sharing) ensuring that a student’s privacy is never compromised
  • To uphold the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), CCER’s use of data is limited to analysis and can not be used in supporting the direct administration of student-specific services. Data systems that support this direct administration of student services should be districts, schools, and programs
  • Engage in efforts that strengthen trust with community and partners; challenge and avoid data use that has the potential for harming trust or compromising data stewardship

Regional impact must be connected to each project, co-created, sustainable, and have clear community or partner accountability

  • Collaboratively identify stakeholders, policies, and mindsets that projects aim to impact
  • If within our team’s expertise, design projects with an intentional hand-off, empowering stakeholders or community partners with data skills, tools or findings so they may lead and sustain insights-driven change
  • If there is no “hand-off” and project involves CCER providing a sustaining function, acknowledge this early on and seek feedback if it’s a role we are best suited to play
  • Continue to build demand from system leaders to use their data to expose system issues and opportunities for improvement