18 Tips for a Successful Elevate Data Quality Adoption

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Check out these strategies and best practices to help your team roll out Elevate Data Quality to district and school stakeholders.

1. Set clear expectations for your data quality program and your use of Elevate Data Quality. Taking time to answer these questions can help. Each district is different, so these are guidelines for your consideration.

• Who will be responsible for defining new Elevate Data Quality rules? Many districts establish a core group of data-focused leaders to work with business leaders and program coordinators. Together they identify data, funding and accountability issues that can be addressed as business rules in Elevate Data Quality.
• Who will be responsible for reviewing and approving rules? As above, the core data team and business team review and approve Elevate Data Quality rules that are then rolled out to district and school users.
• Who will receive Data Certification Scorecards and email notifications? How frequently? Most districts send daily Data Certification Scorecards and email notifications to district program coordinators (e.g., ELL, Special Education), data managers and school staff (e.g., data clerks, administrative assistants). The Scorecards should reflect the data and validation rules that are relevant to each user.
• How and from whom will school users receive 1st -level support? Districts often assign 1-2 people on the data team to answer questions from school and district Elevate Data Quality users. Very often their questions are not about using Elevate Data Quality, but about the source system data (e.g., SIS) that is being validated. Sometimes this support role is in the district’s helpdesk function. The district’s core data team contacts Support@InstructureSolutions.com.
• Who will create Elevate Data Quality “Rule Prescriptions” to help users clean up data? Individuals who understand the business rules and data entry requirements for data are usually the best suited to create Rule Prescriptions. Sometimes these individuals work with the SIS; they can be in business areas; or can be identified as data stewards or data owners.

2. Deliver Elevate Data Quality training in multiple modes:

• Webinars scheduled at various times (Instructure can host sessions), early in the school year and at key points (e.g., after winter break)
• In-person training sessions, combined with other data-focused professional development sessions, e.g., SIS training

3. Roll out Elevate Data Quality to a small group of “early adopter” schools to use Elevate Data Quality for a few weeks, then have those initial users train others and provide testimonials about the data improvements they’ve achieved.

4. Provide an overview of Elevate Data Quality for school principals (via webinar or in-person meeting), focusing on the benefits of school staff cleaning up data on a regular basis (e.g., full funding for all students and schools); and communicate expectations for how school staff will be engaged in the process.

5. Work with school principals to identify the person or people at each school site who will receive Elevate Data Quality email notifications; capture this information in a Google form or other survey mechanism. These individuals will be set up as users in Elevate Data Quality.

6. Set up a once-weekly Elevate Data Quality email notification for principals, so he or she can track progress at their school. Once-per-week tends to be a good cadence for school leadership.

7. Ensure that designated school staff (e.g., data clerks) receive Elevate Data Quality email notifications daily, so they can clean up data on a regular basis and don’t build up a large backlog of corrections.

8. Add “Rule Prescriptions” which will help Elevate Data Quality users clean up data. Start with the highest priority and/or most complex rules.

9. Create a school-level Elevate Data Quality user group in the district, led by early school adopters and the core data team.

10. Develop an informational brochure with your district branding and messaging. Instructure can help to produce this brochure, if needed.

11. Instructure can customize a one-page how-to guide for the district.

12. Share Elevate Data Quality-related information on the district’s Intranet, including a Elevate Data Quality login link.

13. Highlight success stories about the district’s data quality improvement in a district newsletter or employee spotlight. Recognize an individual, team or school achievement.

14. Consider small prizes for schools with the greatest data quality improvement each month, e.g., gift cards.

15. Set a target Data Certification Score and create a friendly competition between schools to see who can achieve the target first.

16. Share data quality improvement metrics with district leadership, including the superintendent.

17. Quantify data quality improvement wherever possible, such as:

• How much additional funding has been captured because of cleaner data?
• How many fewer IEP and ELL students have overdue meetings and evaluations?
• How many days does it take to get a new student fully enrolled with all information complete?
• How many hours have been saved fixing data errors prior to state reporting?
• How many fewer records were rejected by the state when data is uploaded for state reporting?
• How many data violations does the district have at the start of the school year?
• How much improvement can be made, and how quickly?

18. Talk with other Elevate Data Quality-user districts about how they’ve been successful in rolling out Elevate Data Quality.