Florida Department of Education
Individual student level data on Florida public school students, including course, enrollment and test data, and post-education outcome data.
PK-20 Education Data Warehouse: public kindergarten through university students in Florida.
Florida Education and Training Placement Information Program: former public-school students in Florida
Access
Florida Department of Education (FDOE) student-level data are available to researchers whose projects align with the Department’s research agenda, details of which can be found on the Department’s External Research Data Requests site. The Department maintains multiple data sets with their own access procedures. The remainder of this entry focuses on the Florida PK-20 Education Data Warehouse (EDW), which includes data on Florida’s public kindergarten through university education, and the Florida Education and Training Placement Information Program (FETPIP), which includes data on post educational placements, outcomes and training data on former Florida public school students. Requests for teacher-level data are not subject to this process.
Researchers may request an external research application from the Bureau of PK-20 Education Reporting and Accessibility (PERA) ([email protected]) for student level data. As part of the application process, researchers must sign a Security and Access Agreement. The criteria the Department use to determine approval include, but are not limited to, compliance with state and federal privacy laws; whether the research meets one of three allowable purposes: (1) to improve instruction; (2) to develop, validate or administer predictive tests; or (3) to administer student aid programs; relevance to the education information interests of the Florida Legislature, the Governor, and the department itself; and the capacity of the Department to fulfill the request. Once the Department has reviewed the application, it will seek a program sponsor at the Department to support the project. Once identified, the application is forwarded to a methodology committee for review, and once this committee approves the request, the researcher is notified and the request is sent to the Department’s data reporting unit to make the files available. Researchers will be required to present results and conclusions made based on the FLDOE data provided for approval of dissemination. FLDOE will review the accuracy of the interpretation and usage of the data utilized towards the results and provide feedback to the researchers when appropriate.
Some data is not available due to legal prohibitions, interagency or cooperative agreements, or to prevent public confusion from inconsistent methodology. The FDOE cannot release wage records connected to an individual’s race, gender, or date of birth. Any data measures already calculated by the Department (e.g., value-added scores, school grades, school improvement) must be used as calculated; researchers will not be permitted to re-calculate these again independently. If additional data is required after the initial provision of data, the researcher may submit a request for additional years of data using the Additional Years Request Form.
After completion of the approved project, data from FDOE must be destroyed at a time which will be specified once the Department releases data to the researcher. Once the data are destroyed, a Certificate of Data Destruction must be signed by the researcher and an institutional representative and submitted to the FDOE. As a result, requests for additional years of data following the completion of the original project will not be approved and the researcher must submit an entirely new research request. If the researcher’s needs are ongoing, this must be stated explicitly in the original request. If the researcher needs an extension on the agreed-upon data use period, they must submit a Data Extension Request form.
Timeline for Access
It may take several months before data requests are granted or denied. Researchers can review the status of their data request via the Research Data Request Processing System.
Lag Time
Files are updated annually, and are available on an approximately one year lag. For example, data for the 2015-16 school year was available in May 2017.
Cost
Once the request for data has been approved, the researcher may be asked to pay a cost recovery fee based on the hourly rate of the staff involved in extracting the data. In the case that a cost recovery fee is likely, the department will provide the researcher a range of likely costs before the data is extracted so that the researcher can decide if they would like to continue with the request. Once the data is extracted, the requestor will be notified of the exact cost, and once the fee is paid, the data will be released.
Linking
Linking to other Florida agency data usually requires data sharing agreements and permissions. Approval is considered on a case-by-case basis.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- First, middle, and last name
- Social security number
- Birth date
- FDOE does not provide specific information on requirements for linking. They will consider individual level data requests on a case by case basis and may be able to link to other agency data with appropriate agreements in place. The provider notes that so
Data Contents
Partial List of Variables
A complete list of variables is listed within the Student Information System. Certain data elements listed are collected at the district level and not available at the state level. This is indicated as yes or no under “state reporting.” The primary student information data set includes:
- Name, address, birth date and place, gender, race, family demographics
- Attendance, course and assessment data, courses taken, adult education information
- Social data (e.g. bullying and the identified cause), class ranking, employment status, and more
The FETPIP data set includes follow-up information on former students who have graduated, exited, or completed a public education or training program in Florida. Variables include:
- Florida college system data: completion, degree type, continuing education, training program participation
- Earnings, employment records, unemployment compensation, public assistance
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
Glewwe, Paul, West, Kristine, and Jongwook Lee. 2014. “The Impact of Providing Vision Screening and Free Eyeglasses on Academic Outcomes: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Title 1 Elementary Schools in Florida.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 37(2): 265-300.