Email the Author
You can use this page to email Wendy Geller, Dorothyjean Cratty, and Jared Knowles about Education Data Done Right.
About the Book
Across the country hundreds of data scientists and analysts are working for thousands of education agencies trying to help schools, school leaders, and education systems as a whole function more effectively. The work they do is critical to everything from scheduling classes and evaluating programs, to managing enrollments, strategic planning, and making the laws that shape our public education infrastructure at large.
This book is for them. For their work. For the struggle.
Lots of pundits and researchers have ideas about how education data work should be done and who should do it. Many of their ideas are disseminated widely. But, there are far fewer places for education analysts themselves to share their ideas, to describe their challenges, or to cover their efforts to do good science in the everyday.
We wanted to bring the voices and the work these folks do to the forefront, so others among them could learn from the hard fought advances they’ve made and that benefit us all.
This book is by folks who’ve been agency analysts for folks who are agency analysts.
And we hope it is just the beginning.
About the Authors
Today, I'm a team member at AEM Corporation in their Civilian and Commercial Services crew, where I specialize in modernization and innovation. At AEM, we help leaders, thinkers, and professionals tackle their toughest data and technical challenges.
Before this, I was the first Director of the Vermont Agency of Education's Data Management & Analysis Division, where I served alongside my Work Family of Data Scientists as a centralized resource to the organization. My crew led the modernization of collection, stewardship, and use of the institution's critical data assets. We pioneered the Agency's data governance program and the business side of the DataOps continuum.
My Ph.D. (2011) is in sociology from the National University of Ireland Maynooth (www.nuim.ie) where I was a doctoral fellow at the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (www.nuim.ie/nirsa). My dissertation findings highlighted shifting demographics in education arenas and labor markets internationally, specific education orientations occurring across cultures, and presented thoughts on the social and spatial forces surrounding rural community viability.
Since leaving academia, I've dedicated myself to creating the cultural, infrastructural, and operational conditions required for practicing good data science in the public sector.
Specialties: data science, data management, data governance, DataOps, data privacy, administrative data, mixed methods, applied research, program evaluation, continuous improvement, research methods, social policy, management
I am an independent researcher, helping states, districts, and education advocacy groups conduct data analyses with a focus on equity.
I have been a US ED Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) program officer, Duke University researcher working with North Carolina agencies, principal investigator for Rhode Island and District of Columbia research projects, and Hawai’i state data summit plenary speaker.
My journal publications include the Economics of Education Review. Some of my work for advocacy groups can be found online in these EdTrust 50-state equity analyses for preschool, counselors, and advanced course opportunities.
You can contact me at: CrattyEDDR@gmail.com.
Hi. I'm Jared Knowles, founder and President of Civilytics Consulting. You can learn more about Civilytics Consulting’s work, our clients, and our history on our homepage. You can also follow Civilytics on Twitter or subscribe to our monthly newsletter, the Civic Pulse.
I'm a statistical programmer and social scientist with experience in R programming, analyzing administrative records, machine learning, and data visualization. I've also taught R programming and statistical computing to a wide array of audiences.
I formerly served as a research analyst with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. I completed a PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015.