So, what is the Picard Center doing with all of the data that they are collecting from our children? ( See our previous post. )
I for use by the Picard Center. n 2007 our legislature passed Act 18 which allocated $1 million of our tax dollars for the development of an integrated longitudinal data system
From Picard Center's own website:
"This data system will give the Center the capability of conducting research studies incorporating data collected from numerous state agencies. This project will make it possible to discover relationships in data from across various state agencies and thus study and identify trends.
The Picard Center’s system will have unprecedented breadth and scope, integrating not only educational data from prekindergarten through college, but also data related to a child’s overall health and well-being. Additionally, it will follow children into the workforce to capture the long-term economic and social outcomes.
The Center is coordinating communication and cultivating ties among agency partners to support this collaboration, breaking down silos and connecting the data sets so agencies can better understand their own effectiveness.
The design will allow Center specialists to analyze data at multiple geographic levels, such as the school, municipality, parish, state and national levels. This design also permits comparison of schools or parishes, for instance, within the state, as well as comparison of Louisiana trends with those at the regional, national, and international levels. This data are available from multiple sources today—but no one source merges the data elements and compiles multiple data sources at the individual level as this project does.
The longitudinal project also includes the Picard Center’s new Pathways to Louisiana’s Future model, which visually displays the options and pathways individuals take as they move from birth into the world of work. This model could also provide valuable information to policymakers of how changing the landscape could impact future economic and social outlooks"