Strong early childhood systems and initiatives rely on the successful collection, use, and integration of quality data. This page provides toolkits, reports, briefs, webinars, and other materials designed to help states, leaders, early childhood professionals, and strategic partners. The materials can help these groups determine their data needs, adopt best practices for data collection and use, and learn from states that have been using robust data systems to better serve children and families.
Data Systems
The following resources focus on using data in early childhood education.
Empower Families with Data
This brief describes how North Dakota has leveraged its strategic planning to include family voice into its early childhood integrated data system development.
Developing Programmatic Use Cases Webinar
This webinar explains the benefits and uses of a programmatic use case engaging stakeholders in the process.
Tips for Collecting, Reporting, and Using Data in Early Childhood Care and Education
This tip sheet on data systems compiles suggestions to improve the accuracy and usefulness of data collected and reported in early childhood care and education.
Additional Data Integration Resources
The following are materials focusing on data integration and documentation, district counts, and unique identifiers.
SLDS Early Childhood Integrated Data System Guide
This toolkit focuses beyond planning for an Early Childhood Integrated Data System (ECIDS) to include implementation and continuous improvement.
SLDS Issue Brief: A Primer on Distinct Count of Children
This document defines the "Distinct Count" metric as it relates to childhood policy and programmatic analyses and describes factors contributing towards it.
SLDS Issue Brief: Unique Identifiers Beyond K12
This brief supports ECIDS leaders in understanding a unique identifier (UID) and discuss the benefit of assigning UIDs in early childhood.
Additional Resources
The following are additional resources on building and using data systems.
How Policymakers Can Support Early Childhood Data Governance
This brief highlights actions steps for policymakers to support establishing governance structures to increase access to data to inform early childhood policies and practice.
Using Integrated Data to Answer Critical Policy Questions
This webinar features recommendations from the report documenting how states successfully used integrated data systems.
Workforce Data Deficit Hinders Preparation, Support, and Compensation of Early Childhood Educators
This blog highlights the importance of using high-quality comprehensive data to inform workforce policy decisions.
Data Culture Toolkit
This toolkit helps Part C and Part B 619 program staff build effective data teams and support conditions for a culture of data use at the state and local levels.
Data Governance Toolkit
This toolkit assists Part C and Part B 619 program staff with creating or enhancing their data governance policies and procedures.
Data Visualization Toolkit
This toolkit that contains resources about best practices in design principles and data considerations in visualizations.
Integrated Data Tools to Inform Efforts to Improve School Readiness
This brief that provides an introduction to a school readiness framework as an example of an analytic tool to guide evidence-based program and policy decisions.
Approaches and Tools to Coordinate Early Childhood Programs and Services
This brief explains how a community assessment framework can guide states to integrate and use early childhood data across eligibility, access, services, and impact.
The History and Evolution of Early Childhood Integrated Data Systems
This podcast that explains the history and evolution of early childhood integrated data systems (ECIDS) in the United States.
Which System Model is Best for Our State ECIDS?
This brief describes technical approaches to building an early childhood integrated data system (ECIDS): centralized model, federated model, and hybrid model.
The Integration of Early Childhood Data
This report that provides best practices for using existing administrative data to improve services, including how states can use integrated early childhood data to inform decisions.
SLDS Early Childhood Integrated Data System Self-Assessment – System Design
This toolkit guides states to self-assess where they are in the system design process for developing an early childhood integrated data system (ECIDS).
Common Education Data Standards Mapping Toolkit
This toolkit contains tools for mapping local data elements to the Common Education Data Standards (CEDS).
Data Breach Response Training
This training kit is an exercise to assist schools, districts, and other educational organizations with internal data security training.
Guidance Applying FERPA and HIPAA to Student Health Records
This guidance document clarifies how FERPA and HIPAA apply to education and health records maintained about students.
Using Data to Understand Your Program
This framework helps organizations think about how already collected data may help answer questions about their program or identify areas for improvement.