New Hampshire Department of Education Data
Student-level data from NH DOE including state assessment scores, attendance records, and post-graduation plans.
Students enrolled in New Hampshire public schools or sent to out-of-district schools paid for by New Hampshire public school funds
Access
De-identified student-level data are available to researchers upon request. To access these data, researchers work with the NH DOE to develop and sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which outlines data use policies and procedures. In the past, researchers have begun this process by contacting the project manager of the DOE’s Longitudinal Data System at [email protected]. As a part of the MOU, researchers must agree to allow NH DOE to review published reports, and researchers must agree to suppress reporting of small cell sizes to ensure students cannot be re-identified. Upon completion of a research project, researchers must return all data files and destroy any copies in their possession.
Timeline for Access
Schools are required to submit beginning-of-the-year (BOY) files by October. Submissions for end-of-the-year (EOY) files are typically completed by the end of July. BOY files include enrollment and some demographic data on students in each school district. EOY files include enrollment updates and an “academic performance” file that tracks which kinds of programs every student in each district participated in during the year. It is unknown how soon after submission these records are available for request, and the timeline for other files that aren’t explicitly tied to the beginning or end of the academic year (e.g., home schooling records and lists of students in a given class or course) is not clear.
Lag Time
Unknown.
Cost
Data are free to access for researchers who have signed MOUs.
Linking
NH DOE’s data warehouse does not store students’ names, SSNs, or addresses. Each student-level record contains a State-assigned student ID (SASID), a number unique to each student. Separately from the data warehouse, NH DOE maintains a secure database with encryption keys linking student names to SASID.
From publicly available documentation, it is unclear whether NH DOE would link their data on any identifiers beyond SASID. In the past, researchers have obtained data for a pre-defined study sample by collecting student identification numbers for their sample and submitting a list of those numbers to NH DOE.
Identifiers Available for Linking
- State-assigned student ID (SASID) number
- Date of Birth (some data sets)
Data Contents
A list of the data NH DOE collects is available on page 6-17 of the Data Use and Student Privacy Guide. In addition to enrollment, attendance, and GPA records for public school students, NHDOE data include other elements such as post-graduation plans, eligibility for free or reduce price lunch, and demographic data. Further, these data include records for home-schooled students, adult education programs, career and technical education programs, IEP and accessibility records, and state standardized test scores. See the data dictionary for more information on the data elements reported by schools and districts each year.
Partial List of Variables
SASID, status of enrollment, district and school number, student grade, attendance record, post-graduation plans, days suspended, homeless code, eligibility for free or reduced price lunch, state assessment scores
J-PAL Randomized Evaluations Using this Data Set
Carrell, Scott, and Bruce Sacerdote. 2017. "Why Do College-Going Interventions Work?" American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 9(3): 124-51. DOI: 10.1257/app.20150530