Missouri recently joined a small group of states with the capacity to track individual students as they progress through the public school system from kindergarten through 12th grade.Students are tracked by various tests that the state mandates and through identifying numbers that are assigned to education systems.

The state is now being challenged to add the capacity to follow student's education starting with pre-kindergarten and into higher education levels. The Missouri P-20 Center for Education Policy Research hosted the conference that focused on using longitudinal data to improve education in the state.

Executive Associative Dean of the School of Education at Indiana University Don Hossler says he thinks this kind of tracking provides a lot of information about state education programs.

"We can get a sense of how our curriculum is working, how are instructional strategies are working, the effectiveness of interventions we may design to help low income, at risk students be successful at any level of schooling."

Researchers and policymakers hope the data will answer questions about students, teachers, school performance, and effectiveness of curriculum in the classroom. © Copyright 2012, KBIA