April 2005 — Features
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Data Warehousing: An Aid to Decision-Making
Uses for a Data Warehouse
A properly designed data warehouse can help provide educational leaders with information to aid in decision-making. The research possibilities are almost endless. In addition to the more common statistical information, mean, median, etc., administrators can evaluate the results of their decision. When the budget information is tied to student records, one can actually determine if the cost of the new textbooks purchased last year produced a change in student achievement. Is there a link between staff salaries and achievement? Are the students from one program or school doing better in their sophomore year than students in another? Do the students from the new elementary school perform differently at the high school level than students from other schools? Is teacher absenteeism a factor in achievement? The ease with which these questions can be asked and answered is the key to true data-driven decision-making.
The control of independent variables has always been a difficult task in educational research. With the amount of data available in a properly designed data warehouse, this problem is greatly simplified. Demographic data such as race, gender, age, etc. are stored in the data warehouse along with achievement measures, attendance and other school-related data. With the use of the correct query, it is a simple matter to disaggregate results based upon any set of variables. This is a tremendous research benefit.
A requirement of NCLB is that student achievement results be disaggregated by grade, race and sex; a data warehouse makes this a simple task. Because the databases of information are interrelated in a data warehouse, these comparisons are made possible. In a 2002 article from ENC Focus (www.enc.org/features/focus/archive/data/document.shtm?input=FOC-003001-index), Carol Damian writes, “Setting goals for the support of gathering, studying, and using data must be a school- or district-wide priority.” Establishing a data warehouse, converting already stored data, and capturing new data to continually build the knowledge base in the data warehouse would meet that need and be of great help to the educational decision-maker.
References
Han, J., and M. Kamber. 2001. Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques. San Diego: Morgan Kaufman.
Markowitz, A., and L. Elovitz. 2001. “Improving Staff Development Through Action Research.” Journal of the New Jersey Association of Teacher Educators 10 (1).
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