As a professor of education, Rod Ogawa spent 30 years studying public schools, trying to figure out how to improve student performance. In retirement, Ogawa is getting high marks for a new approach.
The answer lies in sharing information among educators and social service agencies, said Ogawa, now a research professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the higher-education leader of a major new data-sharing initiative called the Silicon Valley Regional Data Trust (SVRDT).
The data trust will link school districts and offices of education in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties with health and human service agencies in each respective county, enabling teachers, principals, social workers, public and mental health professionals, judges, and probation officers to share information in real time about students and the services they are receiving. The flow of information, coupled with university-based research, will shed light on problems confronting the districts' more than 400,000 children and their families—and point the way to more effective strategies to address their needs.
Establishing this coordinated flow of information will be transformational for students, because up to 70 percent of variance in school performance is attributable to non-school factors, including neighborhood, family, housing arrangements, parental employment, language, and health, said Ogawa.
To read more of Jennifer McNulty's article, visit:
https://news.ucsc.edu/2017/11/ogawa-datatrust.html
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