In Short:

Schools do not operate in isolation. Student outcomes are shaped not only by what happens inside the classroom, but also by the broader economic and social conditions surrounding students’ lives. The Open Data Index for Schools (ODIS) is a novel national data resource that makes those community conditions measurable, comparable, and easy to incorporate into education research and policymaking.

Abstract

Student outcomes reflect far more than school quality alone. Poverty, neighborhood safety, housing stability, educational attainment, public health, and local opportunity all influence students’ ability to learn and thrive. While researchers have long recognized the importance of community context, assembling the necessary data has required substantial technical effort and expertise, as these contextual factors are scattered across dozens of datasets, collected at different geographic levels, and difficult to integrate into education research. The Open Data Index for Schools (ODIS) is a first-of-its-kind national research resource designed to address this challenge. Covering nearly 23,000 U.S. public high schools, ODIS harmonizes dozens of publicly available datasets into a common framework describing local economic conditions, educational attainment, health, housing, and crime. ODIS transforms fragmented public data into an accessible research resource, enabling more rigorous studies of educational opportunity and better-informed policy decisions. The dataset is publicly available through the Johns Hopkins Research Data Repository to encourage continued innovation by researchers, educators, and policymakers.

About the author

Angela Hawken

professor & Vice dean of research, school of government and policy

Angela Hawken develops practical tools that help governments and researchers use data, evidence, and experimentation to improve public systems. Her work focuses on building research infrastructure that makes high-quality policy analysis easier to conduct and more useful for decision-makers.