NAD Office of Education Data Collection

The North American Division Office of Education collects, manages, and stores in Data Rollup data owned by the individual conferences. Data acquired and its related management serve multiple purposes, namely the following:

1. consolidate data and assist schools and conferences with data storage and utilization.
2. provide teachers, principals and conference superintendents’ access to report cards, cumulative records and transcripts.
3.  support data acquisition for compliance with governmental requirements.
4. create reports required by the Division, Union and Conference Offices of Education for the NAD Seventh-day Adventist Church, accreditation bodies, governmental, and/or local jurisdictions.
5. optimize the delivery and security of education-related data on behalf of the NAD, its unions, conferences, and schools.
6. safeguard from loss of local print-based data, providing electronic access.
7. enhance transferability of data between schools, conferences, unions and higher education.
8. foster accuracy of data.
9. provide informed, targeted comparisons with other independent, private, parochial schools along identified areas through data consolidation and/or disaggregation.

Most of the data is collected through an approved School Information System (SIS), aggregated in a digital format, and made accessible to authorized NAD organizations or individuals.

Access to collected data is available to educators employed within the North American Division Early Childhood Program through 12th grade schools and is based on the level of the authorization granted to the individual.

Data-driven Decision Making

Data-driven decision making in education has the potential to transform classrooms -  improving teacher responsiveness to students, saving teachers time, and ensuring instruction is relevant.

Why is data-driven decision making so crucial for school improvement? Why are leaders turning to data to help drive their leadership?

• To work toward continuous improvement
• To meet accountability requirements
• To focus efforts and monitor progress
• To develop a sense of community through organizational learning

With this in mind, new reports are developed on a regular basis to give conferences and schools important data - assisting in data-driven decisions. The NWEA MAP suite of reports is just an example of one type of reports our educators have at their fingertips.