(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, What can we do for you! A woman appears in a video call at the top right of the slide. Text, Sudie Whalen

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you, Renee.

JAY WRIGHT: Hey, hello.

(DESCRIPTION)
Jay Wright

(SPEECH)
OK, I'm just getting this on my screen, and I guess I'll just double-check. Does everybody see the PowerPoint on your screen right now? Here, I'll go to the cover to make it a little bit better. So does everybody see that on your screen? I've got a double screen, so I've been known to have that a little bit off in the past. So I'm just making sure everybody sees what they should be seeing.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Agenda, a bullet point list

(SPEECH)
So here is our agenda. We're going to have-- we're going to be a little bit experimental today. We're going to be doing what we're calling a reverse panel discussion. So we have three panelists, I'm one of them. Sudie Whalen who you can see on your screen is the second one, and Carol Hirota, who you can also see on your screen, is the third one. So we will be the three panelists.

We will be doing the panel discussion in reverse, meaning we'll be asking you questions instead of you asking us or having some moderator ask other panelists or whatever. You're going to be the askees, and we're going to be the askers, basically. More on that here in a little bit. We're going to-- these are our introductions here. Before we got into the reverse panel though, this was based on a session from the CASAS Institute back in June.

It was a very innocuous session called Mentorship and Collaboration for Data Managers that was at the very end of the institute. It was one of those that I thought I'd get 12 or 15 people at the end of the institute. Everybody pooped out or everybody insta-pooped out, you might say. So we'll just limp along on this one and get her done. But then, miraculously, 300 people showed up and it ended up being an unexpectedly vigorous session for everybody, energizing all those great adjectives.

So that got me thinking on stuff. I got talking to Sudie a couple of times. I got talking to Carol a couple of times, and before you know it, we hatched a new session. So I do want to recap from that just because it was the antecedent to this. Some of the concepts were started from that session. And then, we'll do-- we've done the panel introduction, but I'll let them do a little deeper dive. One big thing here is, why on Earth should you care why these panelists are asking you questions?

So it's in reverse. So the panelists have to explain themselves a little bit. Why are you wasting your time with us? So that's part of the reverse panel as we accept a little bit of onus that way. And then we'll get into some questions. What can we do for you and then what can you do for us? We're going to keep it simple, maybe four questions on each category, going back and forth, trying to do some extra fact finding, you might say.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Reverse Panel Discussion, a bullet point list of the speakers

(SPEECH)
So again, here are the panelists. I introduced Carol, introduced Sudie, introduced myself, more on them here shortly.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, 2021 CASAS Summer Institute: Role of Data Manager. June 23, 2021. Pictures of a bowl of soup, a man in a police uniform, and a man standing in front of a three-way mirror

(SPEECH)
OK, so here is a recap from that session is, again, we started by just saying, hey, what issues are keeping you awake at night? Focusing on data managers. We'll be talking about everybody but the focus will be on data managers a little bit because that was obviously the big focus of what we talked about at the CASAS Institute and that's what Sudie and Carol and I have been talking about here over the last couple of months since we did that session as well.

How can we orient some of the things we do to benefit data managers? How can we be thinking about this role in a more meaningful comprehensive way, et cetera, et cetera. So we started as an icebreaker. And this is probably what got it so rollickin' as we just asked, what's keeping you awake at night? We could have gone for hours on end and not even bothered getting into any of the other questions here.

So a little bit of recap on some of the things I like to talk about with this is, first off, you see that little gendarme there. We'd like to talk about the data police, sheriff going to get you. So everybody's a little worried about that. That's how you start, what's keeping you awake at night, dealing with the state, dealing with the feds. Which sheriff is going to get you this time on all of the myriad of things you might do wrong.

Another one of my favorite little topics is alphabet soup. That, of course, starts with, everybody loves alphabet soup, right? How many people love alphabet soup? Raise your hand if you love alphabet soup. Everybody's going to raise their hand, right? Who doesn't like alphabet soup? So we've talked about that in the sense that everybody loves it, but, hey, it can be a pain because, hey, when you have alphabet soup, what always happens no matter what? Anybody want to help me out in the chat. What's always the problem with alphabet soup?

Anybody? No. Not enough-- well, not enough vowels. OK, somebody is a stickler for precision out there. I was just going to say not enough letters in general. But if you're having trouble with vowels, that's an even better answer. But hey, you're trying to spell data, D-A-T-A. Good luck finding a single A in that bowl of alphabet soup, much less two A's to spell D-A-T-A. Good luck with that. Mission impossible, right?

So you're doing long sentences, and then you really can't spell nothing. That's a big problem. So I relate it to data in that you never really have enough vowels, you never really have enough letters to spell everything. No matter what you do you've got 125% chance of being incomplete all the time. There's never enough vowels to spell anything when you've got that darn alphabet soup. And then my final thing just to kick the cobwebs out and bring everybody back into this is that House of Mirrors analogy.

How many-- this is less unanimous but how many people are House of Mirrors fans? Everybody loves alphabet soup, but House of Mirrors, everybody's more like 50-50. Half the audience loves it, half the audience can live without the House of Mirrors. So whichever way it is, I'll just say, if I'm in a house of mirrors, I'm always like this guy in the picture. I'm always looking over my shoulder trying to look over those mirrors, so I can see the back of my head thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of times, right?

That just trips me out, how many times you can see the back of your head and that's that whenever you do-- for-- I think it's Isaac flippin' Newton we're talking about here. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Isn't that Isaac Newton? Any physicists here? I think that's an Isaac Newton thing, right? That's my observation. Anyway, so Isaac Newton says, for every reaction there's an equal and opposite reaction. That's the house of mirrors.

You do something to fix your data. You're thinking you're doing something fam-flippin'-tastic, but before you know it, all that fantastic work you do caused an equal and opposite reaction. You've got all these unforeseen problems you unwittingly created. You fix those problems, you unwittingly create more problems. You fix those problems, you unwittingly create more problems, and so on and so on and so on. You can't-- no matter what you do, you keep seeing the back of your head, right?

So those are my analogies. That's what keeps you awake at night, or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. We've got those problems that always keep us awake at night.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, 2021 CASAS Summer Institute: Role of Data Manager, a bullet point list

(SPEECH)
Getting more to brass tacks, we talked about rudimentary stuff, training networks to opportunities that might benefit this role and then we got a little cutesy, talking about stuff like coaching and mentorship and how can we collaborate within the region and across the region.

And then, we also talked about, hey, everybody's job description. Good luck if you can even name your own job description. But job descriptions usually do a laughably bad job at accurately describing what anybody does. I know that's true about my job description. Most people admit, yeah, my job description doesn't really say all that much. So we talked about what you really do at your agency and got some really interesting answers. And then, related to that is how can we leverage this. That's where the reverse panel, hopefully, will come in and say, how can we start leveraging this position?

Some of you I know have done a lot of leveraging, on the down low and to your infinite credit, I would say. But there's gotten to be more of that in recent years, that's something that really has been a benefit.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Update: Role of Data Manager, a bullet point list

(SPEECH)
OK, so rudimentary stuff people want to-- this is back in June, everybody wanted more face-to-face training, more face-to-face networking. We made all kinds of high-falutin' promises. I'll just say that was a, "funny thing happened on the way to the forum," Part Deux, though, where everybody thought, we'd be all face to face by now.

But here we are. We're still frittering away, zooming our lives away, watching those sands of the hourglass disappear before our very eyes just like we've been doing for the last couple of years. But we hopefully will get back more into that as we move along. And then more access to networking, maybe not a big California thing, but we added that TE network meeting for all states, not just California. For my two cents, that's been a successful evolution.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Update: Role of Data Manager, continued

(SPEECH)
So then, moving on, we talked about how are we going to leverage this role. So, hey, if you're thinking, Gee Willikers, nobody's done nothing on that one yet, I'll just say, that's not true. We did do something, not nothing. We made some plans and began discussions to plan this session right now. That was my take-home item. Hopefully, it at least moves the ball a little bit.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Update: Role of Data Manager, continued

(SPEECH)
And then over here, we were also talking about, Gee Willikers, we'll look at things like mentorship and coaching when that was also addressed by some of these discussions the three of us have to plan this session. So before I move on, I will define it. This was where we all three talked, is just so you know what we're talking about here, we're using the term mentorship, we're using the term coaching, we're using the term collaboration.

Collaboration, we're thinking everybody knows what that is so we're not doing a definition. But coaching, just so you know, for this session, we're saying, that's where an experienced person supports a learner in achieving specific goals by providing training and guidance. Very generic definition. It can be lots of different kinds of training and lots of different kinds of guidance. But just so you know, there's the definition.

And then mentorship, good luck finding a definition that doesn't use the word within the word to define it. I couldn't find one that did it, so we'll just have to go with developmental relationship between a more experienced mentor and a less experienced protege or mentee, that's how we're going to be defining it here, OK?

(DESCRIPTION)
He returns to the slide with the list of speakers

(SPEECH)
So I think we don't want to spend too much more time getting into line item by line item debriefs.

Let's get into the purpose of this presentation. So here's the list of panelists again if you missed that at the beginning. I don't think many of you did. But again, part of this is to introduce yourself but to introduce yourself with the idea of, hey, why might you want to listen to questions? Why am I answering Jay's question or Sudie's question or Carol's question be worth your while? So to be fair, I'll start before putting Carol or Sudie on the spot.

So my name is Jay Wright from CASAS. I'm putting myself on the panel because I came up with the idea to do the discussion, I guess. But also, I was the one that did that session at Summer Institute. I really think we did have a good discussion, 300 plus showed up. Lots of people aired all kinds of dirty laundry. I like it when people do that, contrary to popular belief. So I wanted to get the clothesline out and see if maybe you might have some handy to air it out more.

Hey, if you've got some really moldy stuff there at the bottom of the pile, that's even better. The moldier the laundry you're airing out, the better for me. So that's why you might want to listen to my questions. So I'll move it along. Sudie, you're next. I'm going-- starting with the bottom, working my way up. So Sudie, your next step on the elevator, why should people be listening to you?

SUDIE WHALEN: Gee Willikers, Jay.

[LAUGHTER]

JAY WRIGHT: That's right, Gee Willikers is the only good answer for that one.

SUDIE WHALEN: [LAUGHS] So I don't want to murder your dirty laundry analogy. So I'm going to leave that one where it was--

JAY WRIGHT: OK.

SUDIE WHALEN: --but I'm Sudie Whalen. I'm the CALPRO Deputy Director and I'm also the PLC Institute Coordinator. And one of the conversations that Jay and I were having, that spurred his brainchild of us doing this, was just thinking about how can we be more supportive and how can we provide more guidance and more support and information and research-based best practices on how to approach data from a mentorship and a coaching perspective.

When we initially started the conversation, I was thinking about the PLC Institute and how can we reinforce that within the PLC Institute in the coaching that we provide via the PLC Institute. But we realized there was a much larger conversation that support is needed in a lot of different places. So part of the reason to listen to me and to engage in this conversation with me is because I and the rest of CALPRO genuinely care about your input, and we want to make sure we're being responsive to what your actual needs are.

And so, if that means airing the moldy dirty laundry so we can figure out what that is, then we definitely want to hear from all of you. And we also want to talk about what we do actually provide and how we can make that even better by being responsive to what data managers, those who work with data managers, those who receive information from data managers, and anybody within that sphere needs, whether it's through our institutes, through our training, or even by doing webinars and different events.

So we just want to make sure that we're being responsive to your needs and that we're leading with data and not trying to make data lead us. So that's my spiel for why I'm here, and I'm going to pass the buck over to Carol. Gee Willikers, Carol, what do you think?

CAROL HIROTA: OK. Thank you, Sudie, and thank you, Jay. So I am currently working with targeted technical assistance with the CAEP TAP Office. I am one of the staff, one of the coaches. We are working with-- there are five coaches and five in consortia that we are working with. And the team that I'm working with-- I actually have the opportunity to work with their person who is responsible for their data and their assessment.

So it's been a real nice opportunity to see how we can use coaching in that process. My past experience, though, has been a principal and director in Stockton at Stockton School for Adults. And we worked on the professional learning communities and data teams. And I have to share with you that the success of our teachers and our administrators and the counselors was really the data accuracy and the collaboration of the student data technicians at the school.

What they did was so valuable because they needed to make sure that everything was accurately placed in or they corrected it depending on if there were any mistakes. But they also worked very closely with the teachers on sharing reports, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. So I think the role of that data person, to me, is like a foundation so that our teachers and counselors and administrators do the good work to show evidence of student learning, and I think that's critical. So thank you.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Reverse Panel Discussion, What can we do for you!

(SPEECH)
JAY WRIGHT: All right. Thank you, Carol, and thank you, Sudie. So we'll get into the questions here now. We've got four or five questions trying to keep it as simple as possible, four or five or in this category right here, What can we do for you. And you won't be that surprised to know the other category of questions is called, What can you do for us. So we're trying to keep it real simple that way.

We'll start with some questions. And again, we're going to ask you what sort of things can we do from CASAS point of view, from CALPRO point of view, from the CAEP TAP point of view. Maybe there's some other little threads with what I do, with what Carol does, with what Sudie does that also might be helpful. But with that in mind, what sort of things might you like to see from the various individuals and organizations that might allow us to do a better job leveraging the role of data manager, promoting that role, helping you do your job more easily et cetera. Hand up?

No? OK. I thought I saw a hand.

SUDIE WHALEN: Brenda, did you have a-- Lydia. Sorry. Did you have a question?

JAY WRIGHT: I saw a hand up but it was taken down, so I guess I'll take that--

LYDIA JONES: I was just waiting for you to finish, Jay. You know how I roll.

JAY WRIGHT: OK.

(DESCRIPTION)
Lydia Jones

(SPEECH)
OK.

LYDIA JONES: You know you can always count on me to put my hand up first.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Reverse Panel Discussion, a list of questions

(SPEECH)
JAY WRIGHT: Yeah. OK.

LYDIA JONES: That--

JAY WRIGHT: Go ahead.

LYDIA JONES: That idea of support is so intriguing, especially for those of us data managers who have been around for a while and have had to build in our own support systems for a wide variety of reasons. That is a fantastic idea just across the board. So that comment, I want to get that out of the way first is to have that support system. That would be amazing in whatever context that ends up developing to be because there are data managers who are teachers, there are data managers who are admin, and there are data managers who are classified staff.

So how that role ends up playing out, how that-- because traditionally PLCs are built for teachers. So how that would end up playing out for a data manager role would be very interesting. But the idea of having a support system for data managers is amazing because, like I said, those of us who have been around the block for a while, we've had to build our own support system, and usually, it is not within our agency

(DESCRIPTION)
Sudie Whalen

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you, Lydia, for pointing-- for bringing that up and pointing that out, that PLCs are-- well, we like to say teacher-led and student-focused. But they also have to be driven by what data shares with us, right? And so it's really important for those who are engaging with professional learning communities to have a close partnership with their data managers so they can get data and not necessarily in real time but in a timely manner so that they can utilize it with those PLC teams.

And so having that structure in place that enables the-- and empowers the data managers to be able to do that without additional stress is really important. So I think some of these questions that we've got here today will definitely help us with identifying what some of those needs are and what that picture perfect support system looks like pretty well. And I just want to see as you're jumping in, thank you, Lydia, for being a really great example.

She jumped on camera and she unmuted and she shared with us. If you can't be on camera, that's OK, but please feel free to unmute and tell us what's on your mind and join the conversation because this is definitely a discussion-based session.

JAY WRIGHT: And as we said, we are the question askers and you are the question answerers. So part of the process is, we really are hoping you might answer a few of these questions. OK. So everybody's had a chance to read these questions. I won't read them off. We'll get going here in the interest of time.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, What additional training and resources will allow you to get started as someone "new to the job?" Skill building and network opportunities?

(SPEECH)
But here is the first question looking at people new to the job.

The second question will be more on experienced folks. But at that session, there were a lot of people new to the job. It's a very daunting task for people who are new. That dominated a big part of that discussion at the SI session and it definitely is a recurring theme at TE and WIOA II network meetings. So I'll just ask and-- what type of training and resources might allow somebody to get started as somebody new to the job.

Are there specific skills we need to work on building? Is it less about skills and more about just giving opportunities for networking? What sort of things could any of us do to help new people get started with this task? And, hey, Lydia, jump at it. You got it.

LYDIA JONES: So for me, I relied heavily years ago on-- there was no one in our area-- well, let me rephrase that, in our agency who knew TOPSpro Visual, who was willing to train, who was willing to do any of that. So it was myself, my boss, and the TE support. So I was all by myself. So the opportunity to have a mentor or to network with people and get some help, I think, is amazing. So having the network where you can call someone or have someone sit with you is fantastic.

I'm not taking anything away from the tech support because they're amazing but having to call Kevin Locke and Patricia McBean every single day--

[LAUGHTER]

Like, I'm pulling names from back in the day.

JAY WRIGHT: Right, right, right.

LYDIA JONES: I will never forget when Patricia was like, thank god, someone with a brain. But it was just-- it was-- I-- so I got.

JAY WRIGHT: Two and half hours of time with Kevin, nothing beat it, did it?

LYDIA JONES: Well, I mean, he had to set my password several times, so I had to learn the hard way. So that networking opportunity and being able to diversify who you're calling and get different points of view is fantastic. And now that we're in a different world of adult education and we have a consortium, encouraging the consortium managers to, hey, if you have another data manager who knows what they're doing in your consortium, go ahead and let your data managers talk to each other.

If you don't have data meetings, maybe you should start having data meetings. It doesn't always have to be about the individual. What do your data managers actually need? Do you know? Have the conversations with both of your data managers or all of your data managers and some consortiums are amazing at this, and some of them are not. And that's from very small consortiums to very large consortiums and everything in between.

But having those conversations with more than just one person there or just one person who is making all the decisions, I think is very, very important. And having multiple voices is very important. That's my two cents.

JAY WRIGHT: All right. Thank you.

LYDIA JONES: [Laughing] five cents.

JAY WRIGHT: Doreen, you've got your hand up. What do you-- do you want to contribute there, Doreen?

(DESCRIPTION)
Doreen O Donovan

(SPEECH)
DOREEN ODONOVAN: Yes, I'd like to address the calling technical support every single day for six months. There's got to be a better way to get somebody onboard than relying on tech support. When you go to the checklist, it's how to do a test. It's not how to set up TE. Setting up TE without integration into our SIS system was just insane and took so long to get the hang of it.

And there's got-- there just has to be another way rather than calling them up every single day to ask another question. And I'm like, where would I have found this in the documentation? And they point me to a 72-page document. We need a checklist to understand uploading those templates by hand. There's no-- there's nothing in sight for me to get automated because my IT department is so busy doing other things.

And so I'm going to continue to have to upload every single template multiple times a semester. And I think I might finally have the hang of it. But I'd be totally happy to work with somebody to go through everything that it took to get to where I am now to create some sort of training specifically for a new person.

(DESCRIPTION)
Sudie Whalen

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: So what I'm hearing, Doreen, is the need for better onboarding and better onboarding resources so that someone who is brand new has access to-- here's the quick way to get the things that you need to get instead of just a very long document that they scrub through and have to call a lot to get support.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Yeah, it's-- I mean I refer back to the actual TE upload list all the time. And that's not on site anywhere that I know of. I mean, I have the data dictionary and I live and breathe the data dictionary too. But there are just so many things that we learned along the way that I don't think we had to learn the hard way. And the other-- and the quirk of it is that I'm at a college rather than an adult school and everything is very adult school-centric and not college-centric and we're different.

JAY WRIGHT: You're from Cabrillo, right? If you don't mind my asking.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Yeah, I'm-- this is moldy, moldy laundry. So I checked--

JAY WRIGHT: OK, there you go. It's all right. That's what we said.

[LAUGHTER]

Bottom of the pile.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: It is at the bottom. I checked to see who else is online before I even spoke, and I--

JAY WRIGHT: Oh, OK. There you go.

[LAUGHTER]

CAROL HIROTA: Thank you, Doreen.

JAY WRIGHT: Well, people are liking what you had to say. I'll say, any other hands up? Anybody else want to address anything, I'll just say, hey, Kay, Linda, and Usha, a lot of really good comments here on the chat. Any of you wanted to add to what you chatted?

(DESCRIPTION)
Carol Hirota

(SPEECH)
CAROL HIROTA: Well, there's a lot of comments about the data team process within the consortium, and I think that there have been some sessions that are scheduled or were scheduled. So I think we can kind of catch up on some of those. I believe South Bay is doing one this afternoon. I know Poway has a data team. So what does that look like when you have your data manager working together with your teachers and your administrators and your counselors and your transition people?

I think that's critical. And I know I believe-- let's see who-- who? Oh, Francisco talks about how he mentored and assisted colleagues in his consortium. And I think that should be an expectation. Someone called out your consortium manager. So how do we work all together, you know? I think that's very important.

JAY WRIGHT: OK. Well, this is good feedback. Thank you. I don't see anybody else's hand up. So, hey, we've got other questions, so we'll go ahead and go to the next one. And hey, I'll let Sudie, maybe, take command and control of the second question.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: Thanks, Jay. So our question for you is what additional training will provide the timely information needed to continue to excel for you all as a data managers and those who support data managers, including skill building or networking opportunities? We've already heard networking opportunities. We'd like to see more data meetings within the consortium groups, better onboarding. But what other training needs do you have?

And I see a couple coming up in here. Tutorial on advanced filtering would be really useful. OK. Good to know. Other training needs. And if you want to unmute and come on cam and share, please do let us know what additional training needs do you have aside from what's already been mentioned. Go ahead, Lydia.

LYDIA JONES: So coming out of the newer user. And I know Jay knows exactly where I'm going with this. So coming away from the newer user a little bit, but as far as skill building for the advanced user, that would be fantastic. Something that-- and this would have to be really thought out about a little bit more and at a little bit deeper level. For someone who is already familiar with some of the schemas and the topics that we've discussed a lot.

But for those advanced users who want to dig deeper into their data, who want to know the whys, and who want to go-- I don't know. Gary wants to go into statistics, and we talked about that at the Summer Institute session a little bit, but that would be great so that we cannot get-- and this is going to be bad, but get a little bored with the day in and day out of our job.

So to keep it interesting-- and then, of course, always networking. Networking is always great. But as far as taking it up to the next notch so that we don't become complacent with our jobs for those of us who have been around the block.

SUDIE WHALEN: So do you mean going beyond just cleaning up and sharing what the data is but actually doing some data analysis and trending notifications and things like that--

LYDIA JONES: Yes, I do.

SUDIE WHALEN: --to identify equity gaps and those kinds of things?

LYDIA JONES: Mm-hmm. Yes.

SUDIE WHALEN: Great. Anyone else? Really good suggestion. Maybe host a monthly networking meeting.

JAY WRIGHT: Doreen?

SUDIE WHALEN: Great. Thank you. Go ahead, Doreen.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: On the positive side, I walked into the position where we were already doing reports at the consortium level of the consortium data. And so there were some existing, basically, PowerPoints that they were used to looking at. And I refined them a lot along the way. And I've never shared those with anybody, but my systems are close to set up, they could be better. So that I copy and paste the blue sheet, the agency report, into Excel and it creates some reports--

SUDIE WHALEN: Nice.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: --that are-- it doesn't go straight to a chart because you have to pay special to clean things up, but it definitely takes you to an entire PowerPoint around enrollment and TE going-- and literacy gains and everything in charts and graphs because we're not showing directly out of TE to the board. And we haven't-- I've never been to a training where we looked at how to take that data to the board.

And then the other thing that we did is the board said, great, we want it by region, and Jay is familiar with this fun-fun project. They wanted to know North County versus South County, and there was no way to do that in a reasonable manner in TE. And so we asked for a flat file. Now, I don't know if Jay wants everybody to know that that's a thing, but with that flat file, I was able to do all kinds of analysis way quicker and easier than pulling out out of a PDF.

JAY WRIGHT: OK. Chris, you've had your hand up too?

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you.

CHRIS: Yeah. And this is a shoot-the-moon thing that just came up a little recently. Maybe a simple tutorial on statistics because what we did recently is, we had-- we took two courses or two classes, and we looked at the attendance rate for both classes. And they were-- one of them was in the evening, one of them was a day thing. And there wasn't-- there was a little bit of a change, but there wasn't a big difference.

And so, four of us and our leadership team sat around saying, so who remembers their statistics? Who knows this? Is this a big enough difference? It's an actual difference or is this just some little piddly thing that happens because of random chance? And no one really quite knew the answer to that, so if-- that would be a neat thing. I know it's off left field, but I thought I'd bring it up.

SUDIE WHALEN: It's a really good point. And I think I'm like-- I'm totally hearing everything we're saying. Doreen already has created her own little tool so that she can do that data analysis piece and maybe larger understanding of what CASAS can provide, so we can get more regional information as well as better ways to share these data reports and information with stakeholders.

But then, I'm also hearing that need for a better understanding from a statistical standpoint like, do we all have a shared understanding of what this means? And I really like the point that you just made, Chris, in terms of what really does indicate a trend and what is too narrow of a margin to count as a trend. So I think that's also important. What about for those who are supporting you or for those who have to work with?

Do you-- can you think of any kind of training needs that-- for example, I'm a PLC leader. What do I need to know in order to know what to ask you for or what are the things that you wish people would know when they come to you with these kinds of requests? What kind of training support can we provide to those who are supposed to be there supporting you or that you provide information to? Go ahead, Lydia.

LYDIA JONES: So I think that that's a question that really is district by district. In my agency, it very-- it goes through the director of every program. So I don't have the PLC leads coming directly for me for information. In the wayback machine, they would. Everything now goes from as a lead to the director, from the director to me. So I don't know what to say. So it is very interesting. It makes things a little bit more colorful.

So it very-- it turns into a game of telephone, trying to figure out what exactly do you need to effectively look at data? Especially when you are running through the gambit of admin turnover. We've stabilized at my agency as far as that's concerned. But then, it is the retraining of high school admin into the world of adult education which is always fun. And then once they get it, then it starts all over again.

And then a new director of adult ed comes online, and you're like, OK, we're now switching gears and reevaluating so it's-- and I'm sure we're not the only organization who has had that flux going on. But again, we're finally stabilizing, but at least as far as medium-sized agencies that are trying to work within our confines, I don't-- I no longer have the luxury of being able to speak with my PLC leads and saying, all right, so what exactly would you like to look at and what are you trying to accomplish?

It very much is program director letting me know this is what they want to look at--

SUDIE WHALEN: Right. OK.

LYDIA JONES: --which makes things a little bit challenging.

SUDIE WHALEN: It does. I hear-- I completely hear what you're saying. And I know, for our participants who go through CALPRO, PLC-- not PLC but Leadership Institute, they get to hear from Jay and they get to hear from Carol about how does-- what does this data mean? How do I utilize it? That kind of thing.

But what I'm hearing is a broader need of teachers and teacher teams to understand what data is available and what specifically to ask for when they're requesting data from data managers, just to make that game of telephone a little bit more streamlined and clearer. OK. Thank you. So I think at this point, Jay, we're ready to move on to the next question. I see your comment, Francisco. Admin and clerical turnover is an issue and that's not the first time I've heard that too.

So thank you all so much for sharing with me on that question, and I'll pass it back to Jay.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide

(SPEECH)
JAY WRIGHT: One other quick thing is, Lydia and Priscilla, I'll just say, you can scroll up. You've been beckoned. I'll leave it up to you, Lydia, and you, Priscilla, whether you want to respond to the chat or not, but I'll just note you're being called out. OK. So, Carol, I'm going to let you take the ball on this next question about types of opportunities.

CAROL HIROTA: OK, so the next question we have for all of you on this call today is, what types of opportunities will help you leverage all that you know and do? And who needs to have a better understanding of what you do and why it is so important? And so far, I've heard that there's been some turnover, learning of roles and responsibilities. I'm also curious to know how many of you work in isolation as opposed to working with a team at your site or your consortium.

So, please, comments, questions.

JAY WRIGHT: Somebody's hand-- I don't-- can't tell who. Oh, Lydia. Oh [CHUCKLE]

CAROL HIROTA: Lydia. Thank you, Lydia.

JAY WRIGHT: Like I needed to ask.

[LAUGHTER]

LYDIA JONES: So there are times where I feel like I work in isolation. I'm party of one. And yet, when there are projects, obviously, I'm in the director's office. And then I work with her team which are under-- the directors under her. But then, if there are problems at the testing sites, then I go out to the testing sites and troubleshoot all those problems. So it is-- the data manager is not a-- it's collaboration when it needs to be.

And then, it's isolation when you're working. And it's not-- it can be exceedingly lonely, especially if you're someone who enjoys talking to people--

[LAUGHTER]

--and you're an extrovert, so it's not always the most fun. But if you enjoy data and digging and trying to find out where the problems are and problem-solving, then it's great. But it is lonely.

CAROL HIROTA: Thank you, Lydia. So I'm reading the chat also. There's quite a few people who are in the same situation as you. They all work in isolation. They're working in a small consortium. I do know that there are some opportunities if your teams are in like a PLC, a professional learning community, because then you're working with a team and not in isolation.

I don't know if there's anybody out there that has that opportunity to work in a professional learning community or a data team or any kind of a team where you don't feel like you're working in isolation. Can anyone else out there share what their experiences are? So that your why like Lydia is asking about data, you all work on it together. It's not just the data manager all alone.

LYDIA JONES: I can tell you that I've asked.

CAROL HIROTA: OK, thank you.

LYDIA JONES: I have asked for data meetings, and I have asked to be teamed up in our consortium with the other data manager since we're a small consortium, and I was told no. So that's what led to my initial comment early on.

CAROL HIROTA: OK. Lydia, you've got an invitation in the chat, so go check it out. Doreen? You have your hand up.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: I work with five researchers, but I'm only assigned 20% to the consortium. But I still have the access to all of them and a manager that's awesome. And so I have access to the SQL database for the whole college, and they're teaching me how to use SQL, so I can get enrollment data and stuff from there as well. So I'm feeling very lucky, and anybody can reach out to me too off of my email. And I would love to hear from more college people, Lydia.

CAROL HIROTA: Thank you. Thank you very much. Kay also has a comment in here about the differences between large and small agencies, absolutely, perhaps establishing a network of data managers from a small agency with mentorship support. Thank you, Kay. A great opportunity. So more formalized. Thank you.

SUDIE WHALEN: Erica has her hand up.

CAROL HIROTA: Erica. Thank you.

ERICA: So our consortium, what we do is that we have monthly meetings with all of the other data managers within the five schools within the consortium, including the college within our consortium. And so, we all work together to bring up issues on the table, what each school is experiencing as an agency as well as our data. And so we all work together to ensure our data is matching to where we all have set standards.

So all of our data consolidates together, so we're not having different issues. We're not looking at different things at the same time. And so we've even discussed together, OK, the definitions of our using the data dictionary. We've discussed certain things of how we can tag things to determine as a consortium, and it has helped along the way. For a while, I've always been alone because we're a very small agency compared to the other four schools that I work with.

And so having that network as well as that reliability of for me to just reach out if I have one data question, they are able to answer any questions and everyone has different perspectives of how they work things. And so it really has helped us on our consortia coordinator getting us together and discuss these issues and getting everything-- everyone to be on the same page.

So it really helps a lot to have that discussion with your consortium coordinator for all data managers to work together to ensure that the data is being inputted correctly as well as bring up issues where maybe some person is more knowledgeable than others. And that's how we're able to learn together and train each other.

CAROL HIROTA: Thank you, Erica, for sharing that experience that you have with your team out there in your consortium. I'm also seeing in the chat, Maria, if you want to unmute and share about your working group of consortium members at its NAC, NAAEC. If you want to share that experience so people will have a better idea of how you work within your consortium.

MARIA EINAUDI: Sure. Hi, everybody. I'm Maria Einaudi. I'm a transition liaison at Oakland Adult and Career Education. And there are some other people here in this meeting whom I work with as well. So the consortia is made up of a variety of adult schools and the Peralta Community College District. And we have been looking at data for a few years now. And we've have been bumpy because where we pulled data from, what are we supposed to be adding-- entering data into, I think some people here may be using CommunityPro. We have stopped using CommunityPro.

And the community colleges have a different reporting system in the adult schools. So we were spending a lot of time looking at definitions of things that we should be tracking and how to improve upon that, how to improve and make data systems more usable, user friendly. One of the other things, though, that I mentioned in this is that we all have different access to parts of the data. And so you can't drill down in the same depth if not everybody is sharing the exact same system.

So anyway, that's that. And we meet pretty regularly, at least once a month, sometimes twice a month. Sometimes, if it's demanding a little bit more.

CAROL HIROTA: Thank you.

MARIA EINAUDI: But we also do have the manager. I'll stop real quickly in a moment. But the manager of our consortium is doing a really excellent job of tying all the pieces together. OK, thanks.

CAROL HIROTA: No. Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments about your experiences in the Peralta area, community college area. To meet more than once a month just tells you how much you guys value your data and how much you are making that a priority to get together. I also know, and we'll go on to the next question, but Richard from South Bay consortium made a comment about talking about shop with other people.

I do know that they do have a session this afternoon on their data team process. Richard, do you want to unmute and make any comments about that or then we will move on after you make your comment? Thanks. OK, Jay. I think we can move on to the next question.

JAY WRIGHT: I thought he was here too.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Are there any activities or requirements, locally or statewide, that you think support and enhance your work? Any activities that inhibit this effort?

(SPEECH)
OK, so looking at just overall statewide activities or anything regional. We've covered this, I think, within Carol's question. Some of you were looking for networking with small agencies or networking with specific roles and so on. But just keep at any specific activities that we could offer from a statewide perspective or anything that we could facilitate locally that you think might help.

I see a lot of comments on the chat that address this already, but I'll just say, does anybody have anything you wanted to add on this? OK, Doreen.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: I was just thinking about this duality between the adult school progress with CASAS and the college progress with the student success dashboard and LaunchBoard and getting people to understand how you measure progress at the college was really hard. They really wanted to see our CASAS data. And we're like, no, CASAS doesn't have anything to do with adult ed at the college level. You have to look at progress of students progressing through ESL levels.

And they're like, well, is there a test? And they're like, no, it's whether the teacher passes them or not. And they were just horrified because they're doing this super fancy, are we testing everybody and what level are you at? And at the college, we're like, oh, yeah, we think you passed the non-credit class, and that counts as [INAUDIBLE].

JAY WRIGHT: Though just curious, Doreen, who do you mean when you say, they. Your interesting comments, but who was it that's making these comments that you're describing, just curious.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: The adult school doesn't understand why they can't-- the college can't be measured using the same metrics as the adult schools measured it. And it makes them angry because it's their-- it's very wishy-washy to them but that's the way it is. And so, I really have been pushing to look at the LaunchBoard data, and now that it's much more cleaned up and easier to use. But we haven't ever really-- I mean, sometimes we have West Ed and Jay in the same room, but it doesn't happen very often.

But those two things, like hand in hand, we need to look at whether students are getting minimum wage and how many of them have jobs after the fourth quarter. And all of these metrics that are part of it, but somehow we always end up focusing only on the gains piece of it. But whether they get a job or not maybe is more important than that. And there doesn't seem to be much focus on that even if you look at the agenda of this whole conference, there's not much focus on looking at that other piece of the data.

(DESCRIPTION)
Carol Hirota

(SPEECH)
CAROL HIROTA: I see-- Jay, I see Ryan Whetstone from Mt. SAC Consortium that they also have a data group. So I don't know if he has any information he can share on working with their community college. Doreen, thank you so much for that.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: Can you guys hear me?

JAY WRIGHT: Yup.

CAROL HIROTA: Yes.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: OK. The interesting conversation, Jay. Jay and I are fast old friends.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm listening to you guys. And well, Mt. SAC is the only college, and they do report their data in TE. And so they do a transfer process to get that information out of MIS into TE. The only thoughts that I just wanted to just put out there were, I do think that it absolutely benefits people if you can get your consortium to create a data group, I think that's a necessary component and to have leaders that would not support that is beyond me [INAUDIBLE] maybe it's just because of where I am.

But I'm in the second largest consortium, at least by student count, in the state, so-- or I'm the manager of it. And I think our group is very valuable. Several of our team members are on this meeting right now. And I think because we met monthly for years, it's just integrated into our process. They communicate with each other. They support each other. Recently, we did have a data coordinator who-- she resigned about just over a year ago, pre-COVID. And we didn't fill the position.

But from a personal level, I actually felt like that coordinator was to help all the schools get back onboard as we rebooted adult education across our region and just made sure they all had CASAS in place, and their SIS system in place, and that was all there. So now they're running, and more recently, when we met and a big thanks to Jay and CASAS, Margaret Teske, we have one of your data techs.

Scott Gutman participated in our last data meeting we had last month and it was outstanding because it was just this back and forth with our data coordinators and Scott. And they were sharing screens, going between ASAP and TE and just really able to speak the same language and dealing with issues that they were having on-site. And so that was really good. And so one thing I think is good to have is a person who is very familiar with the technical side of data and transfer with both programs, especially with TE and ASAP, at least for my region.

And the next level I would look at is like if I can just get a tech person from ASAP in that meeting, they're having similar issues, and they're isolated. If you're sitting at your school by yourself and you can't get that tech on the line, it's different when you're [INAUDIBLE] with eight other schools and they're data people with similar issues. Some other things that came down over the years. Initially. Jay, I used to love your presentation you did that really defined the data and what constituted a data point for outcomes.

And so we reviewed that early on. I do think we need a simple-- I'm going to call it a layperson data guy for the data elements of CAEP, and a simple onboarding guide. That idea that somebody was calling for technical assistance every day, every question should have been written down. That is the foundation of a guidebook for me, that now we could use as an onboarding process for new people coming in. But if the interesting side on the analysis is-- Jay, you know I run a lot of our consortium reports myself.

And then I share them with our groups and with our administrators. And we look at that data. They can look at it simply at a school lens and they look at it as through a consortium lens. And there's so many other things moving in adult education right now, we don't really have the resources to do those deep dives except to just say, where are you right now? What's your enrollment? What's your persistence?

Jay knows I'm pressing for an equity-type report, something that is a turnkey push button. And the latest thing that's coming through my head is something that shows our why, like a return-on-investment-type report, is the latest thing that was going through my head. Sudie did send me a little bit of it, some information on this last year. But I think it's something that would be interesting to show also. But all I have to say, I really do think a data group is important.

And if you don't have one where you are, tap into one. And now, there's virtual. Anybody out there that wants to plug into one. You're welcome to plug into ours. But all my adult schools use ASAP 3 and 4. And the college does participate, but I just saw, I believe-- is anybody from North Orange on the line? Because I think North Orange is having a group that's focused from the community college side, and how they're handling their non-credit data and also data transfer.

So I think that's also--

JAY WRIGHT: Right. Well, thanks for that. I'm going to--

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: That's all I got.

JAY WRIGHT: --bring on a couple of things you just said. One is, I was going to mention, yeah, the new-- it's not there yet, it should be out soon. But the latest and greatest CAEP-reported TE is one that Ryan was the architect of, and it might relate to what Doreen was talking about too. It will be a consortium-level report that can be done by zip code. With that, I think, maybe being the best field to use to try to look for results by region within a consortium.

The other thing I wanted to pounce on with what Ryan just said, he alluded to it without getting too detailed, as I've heard Ryan talk about Mt. SAC, Maria brought up some stuff in Oakland, and Doreen in Santa Cruz and so on. What I'm wondering is are there any of you that have gone crazy and collaborated with neighboring consortia? That is, I know Ryan is doing all sorts of crazy stuff within Mt. SAC.

Has Ryan taken a flying leap and pole-vaulted over to Chaffey or Rio Honda? Has Doreen maybe looked at Gavilon or gone down to Monterey or anything like that? Just kind of wondering, are there any instead of intra-consortium groups, any inter-consortium groups that any of you have tried?

(DESCRIPTION)
Sudie Whalen

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: I'm interested to hear that too because we know there's consortiums in the north and the south that regularly get together to share information. So are we talking about data in those consortium groups?

JAY WRIGHT: OK. Thank you, Kay.

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you, Kay.

JAY WRIGHT: So you're saying Carrick and Solano tried that. At least, they stuck their toe in the pond or whatever.

(DESCRIPTION)
Carol Hirota

(SPEECH)
CAROL HIROTA: And state center. Thank you, Sherry.

JAY WRIGHT: Yup. OK. I mean, not that you're required to but just wondering. That was what I was gleaning with Ryan's comments.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Any concerns with COVID-19 or the staff turnover issues taking place?

(SPEECH)
OK. Well, let's-- just because we do have more questions, this is one that some of you brought up when I was asking you prior to the session, not really COVID-19. I probably wrote this poorly, but what a lot of you have been bringing up is all the turnover going on during COVID-19, moving out of COVID-19.

I'll just say, in regional and statewide network meetings, there's been a ton of discussion on this. But like the PLC issue, most of the discussion has been related to teachers, not really data folks or other staff outside of teachers. So any of you with anything to say about staff turnover specifically as it relates to data managers, to data collection efforts at your agency, maybe to neighboring agencies within your consortium. Anybody with anything to say about staff turnover?

I mean, it can be staff turnover in general. But specifically anything related to how it might affect data managers and data collection? Anybody with anything?

(DESCRIPTION)
Ryan Whetstone

(SPEECH)
RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: I'll chime in on that, Jay.

JAY WRIGHT: Please.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: It just slow-- it slows the process. It throws the wrench in it. One of my districts lost their data person, and that usually is just one person and if that one person's been there for years, all that knowledge went out with them. And it's-- you really have to get the new person onboard. Hopefully, they are coming from a data position somewhere else, that they have this basic understanding of a student database and transfers.

But if not, just this basic process that needs to occur and simple, baby steps. But it's happening, and it's happening with mine. And that's why I was saying that my consortium schools have reached across to other schools within the consortium to almost create an ad hoc training for someone to get them up to speed, and they've been collaborative and helping each other like that. But that's the thing. And I think we're going to see a lot more of it. A lot of people are moving.

(DESCRIPTION)
Sudie Whalen

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: There's a really great comment in the chat. Documentation, documentation, documentation. And I would take it a little bit farther than just what Chris mentioned about having your data person write down exactly what their processes are and things like that. I think that's a great best practice.

But I also think if you have for administrators, for the teachers, TOSA's those kinds of things, they can documentation of how you utilize data, so you know what to ask for, makes it a lot easier when someone new comes in and the data manager doesn't have to hold their hand to help get them onboarded to what they're supposed to be asking for because I think this turnover issue-- the turnover and data managers and then also the turnover in staff can also put-- other staff can also put strain on data managers. Thank you so much for bringing that up in the chat.

CAROL HIROTA: I also see another-- yeah.

JAY WRIGHT: That's a critical missing piece.

(DESCRIPTION)
Carol Hirota

(SPEECH)
CAROL HIROTA: Yeah. I also see one. How are consortia addressing their three-year plan goals, considering the lag time inherent in LaunchBoard 2021 data? We have CASAS data reports for that year but not college. I ask because the 2021 academic year seems to be where the pandemic is really being felt. Anybody else have comments on that?

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: I'll chime in on that.

CAROL HIROTA: Thank you, Ryan.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: I'm going to say use what you have. There is no penalty to not have the latest data. So don't stress out about what you can't get your hands on. Why-- it's-- and there's-- somebody tell me something different. But I'm not aware of a repercussion for not having that. My only understanding is that you cite your data source and whatever conclusions you're drawing from it, and I don't know anybody out there that's going to question it.

JAY WRIGHT: OK. All right. These lots of really good comments in the chat. Just because we are-- these are great comments.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Reverse Panel Discussion "Inside Out", What can you do for us!

(SPEECH)
But hey, enough of this, what can we do for you stuff, ha ha ha. Time to figure out what you can do for us.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, a list of questions

(SPEECH)
So I'll let Sudie go ahead. Here's the questions. Very similar to the other way around just looking at it, mostly from an inside-out perspective.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide

(SPEECH)
But I'll let Sudie take the first one here, how can you help us collaborate and intervene? I'm sorry.

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you so much, Jay.

JAY WRIGHT: [INAUDIBLE] stealing your thunder. Sorry.

SUDIE WHALEN: [LAUGHS] [INAUDIBLE] Jeepers creepers, Jay, just stealing everything.

JAY WRIGHT: Jeepers creepers. Gee Willikers.

SUDIE WHALEN: Just on a new slogan.

JAY WRIGHT: That's right.

SUDIE WHALEN: [LAUGHS] So one of the key threads we've heard throughout this conversation is how much collaboration is beneficial to this process. We see consortiums, like Ryan mentioned earlier with his consortium, which is inherently extremely collaborative, not just around data but around equity and so many other topics.

And so we know that this is really important but it's also important for us as professional development providers, as those who support you, to know what kind of collaboration would you like to see across these various systems that you engage with from CALPRO to CAEP to CASAS, and what kind of-- how would you like to see that move forward so that we can better support you? There's some things we've been percolating and thinking about and things like that that we want to do.

We want to hear from you all on what type of collaboration that you need to see at the state leadership project in CAEP TAP level to see how we can better support you. Doreen said she's not able to get all the information that's in LaunchBoard. Was that in reference to what Ryan was mentioning or what we were talking about in the previous question?

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Yeah.

SUDIE WHALEN: OK. Thank you. I'm hearing. I keep seeing a repeated trend in here in terms of understanding the variances and nuances between adult ed data and community college data and how those pieces work together. We need to think back to what used to be called the Neil and Jay Road Show. Maybe that's something that needs to come back. OK. Great. Any other areas that you'd like to see us continue to do this collaborative work?

Currently, we do these things for our Leadership Institute. Jay has been helping me with revising or thinking about where do we start with data in terms of our PLC Institute. But we really want to-- and also, in terms of when we talk about coaching the various coaching elements and making sure we're making data usage an integral part of that. But Francisco said, yeah, the Neil and Jay Road Show will be coming back. I don't think it'll be called Neil and Jay anymore.

It might be Jay and Other. [LAUGHS]

JAY WRIGHT: Who knows?

SUDIE WHALEN: It could be. We bring back the old band back together.

JAY WRIGHT: One thing, I was just going to add a little bit more to the turning-it-inside-out spin. So we've had a lot of talk about, hey, what can Sudie do? What can Carol do? What can Jay do? What can the state do? So anything that you can-- so instead of what we can help you with, what do you have to offer that you can bring to the table that would really allow Carol to do wonderful things or really allow Sudie to do wonderful things? Or anybody else here, what is it that you might bring that could really help us help everybody else, so to speak?

SUDIE WHALEN: I think I would love to see Doreen's presentation. I know that's on my list. [LAUGHS]

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Ditto.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: You should put it in the chat.

[LAUGHTER]

SUDIE WHALEN: Doreen, you might be getting a followup email from multiple people on you asking for that presentation. And thank you, both, for your kind comment.

JAY WRIGHT: Not necessarily asking for that but just seeing what sort of things are out there that you could do that would help.

(DESCRIPTION)
Carol Hirota

(SPEECH)
CAROL HIROTA: I appreciate all the networking that's going on. You know people--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

CAROL HIROTA: Sorry. Yeah.

JAY WRIGHT: No. Go ahead.

CAROL HIROTA: No, I just appreciate the people who are outreaching to network like Ryan and the other folks out there, Doreen. I'm willing to work with other people so thank you.

SUDIE WHALEN: Yeah. I think something for us to think about, Jay, is a way for us to gather and share resources because I think what we're hearing is that there's a lot of different tools out there. There's different lists. There's the data dictionary everybody keeps talking about. But there's also cheat sheets we've all created for ourselves in terms of our processes and how to make these things work.

And I think in terms of acclimating someone new to the role, it might be really good for us to have a general idea of what are you all actually sharing right now. And then, how can we put that down and distill it into easily digestible chunks that can be shared with someone who's new to this role.

CAROL HIROTA: And I'm definitely seeing that there are parts of sessions that need to focus on-- or networking on the procedures and the input of data and just accessing the CASAS TE or LaunchBoard. And then the second group is the why and the delving into the data team process. Two different systems going on. One more technical and the other more process oriented.

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you. And, Doreen, you mentioned the data folks might be interested in joining the RP group. Do you want to share a little more about what that is?

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: RP group. Yes. That's what I heard about. RP group.

SUDIE WHALEN: Doreen, do you want to enlighten us lay-folks on here about what that is?

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Well, that's a group of research-- community college researchers across the state. Their conference is actually happening right now in 13 feet of snow in Tahoe. And they-- it's all-- they do a conference twice a year plus they do-- we have regional meetings plus we have-- they do lunch-and-learn webinars all around data. Their focus is around college data, so there's a lot of talk about 8705, but that's certainly relevant to all of us folks as well.

And so it's not totally targeted to the particular problems we address but it's certainly related. And if enough of us were there, then we could change the conversation a little bit. Anyway, there's the link. You can take a look at it and see if it's something that-- it's free. It's just a group of researchers in the state.

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you, Doreen, so much for sharing. Right. So that's something great to have access to investigate and look into it and see if that's something that you want to utilize. And so I think we'll be sharing our email addresses later. But if you do have more things that you want to share in terms of what you're sharing with new people that are going to be onboarded, one of the needs that we heard a lot was that just the need for better support for people who are coming into the role as well as the need for better-- a deeper dive for people who are more experienced in this role.

So it definitely sounds like a multilevel approach is needed here.

JAY WRIGHT: Hey, anything else on that? Just in the interest of time, we'll move here to the next question so we can get through.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, How can you help us develop new programs and opportunities that will enable you continued success? Or any new ideas that might help you grow into a "larger" role locally or statewide?

(SPEECH)
So we have a, what can you do for us in terms of helping out new folks? Anything that might help experience folks get a larger role. Maybe this is to benefit you personally. Maybe this is to benefit the role of data manager just overall. But anything that we could all do that might allow more success for everyone. Go ahead, Francisco.

(DESCRIPTION)
Francisco Pinedo

(SPEECH)
FRANCISCO: OK. Good morning. So I think one of the-- and this is going mainly for administrators and people doing the hiring is that if we were to have the clerical staff be actually full-time. I know that sometime it's not possible. But maybe that could be an incentive to keep them on the long run and not having to do such a high turnover because within our consortium two agencies have new people, and I've been just looking through the weeds, and I know that they are hourly part-time, and most of the people want something more.

So I think a way that if we want to get clear, accurate data, is having these positions be full-time instead of part-time, so then that way we could retain those people. I mean, we have such a high turnover rate with staff anyways because they're mostly hourly. But maybe if in our consortium level and administrators could see the benefit of investing those extra dollars in full-time positions, our data is going to be much more cleaner.

The cleaner the data, the more funds that will come into our program. So that's something that I advocate for a lot with clerical staff is if at all possible have them be full-time.

(DESCRIPTION)
Sudie Whalen

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you, Francisco. And I know that's a tricky area because it depends on budgets and what people can do. But I think that's a really good point about incentivizing those things. But I see you joined us on camera, did you want to weigh in?

[LAUGHTER]

Or are you just responding to Lydia's challenge to turn on your cameras? [LAUGHS]

[INAUDIBLE]

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you.

JAY WRIGHT: All right. There we go. Lydia's happy. She convinced one person to get on camera. Major victory, huh?

SUDIE WHALEN: Two. Two more popped up.

JAY WRIGHT: OK. All right, all right.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide

(SPEECH)
OK. Let's have-- I'll have Carol go ahead and move to the next question here. Are there any-- how can we promote some of these opportunities you're coming up with? You've had lots of good ideas. How can we help you be on stage, helping everybody else? Anybody with any ideas on that? Sorry, go ahead. I keep on talking, don't I?

CAROL HIROTA: That's OK, Jay. Keep it going.

JAY WRIGHT: But anybody with any ideas on ways-- different opportunities we might-- that you could probably-- that we could create or you could be on center stage helping other people out with some of these things we've been discussing?

CAROL HIROTA: I'm thinking that I'll just start off. I think that there have been a lot of people in this session that could get together and collaborate and create a session and share at one of our next adult education sessions. Ryan is one. Thatcher, I saw your name come up. Doreen. There are many of you. State center. There's some people up at Carrick. What are you guys doing that is helping support our data managers in the good work that they do? The important work that they do.

JAY WRIGHT: So like the extension of reverse panel discussion. So now we'll turn you inside out and make you the reverse panel.

[LAUGHTER]

SUDIE WHALEN: Hey, sometimes the best information comes from practitioners, not necessarily those of us who call ourselves experts.

JAY WRIGHT: That's [LAUGHS]

CAROL HIROTA: Absolutely. I have to tell you, when you work at an agency, your data person is really important because they are the ones that are showing the evidence that students are learning or not learning. It is really, really important.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, In which statewide processes and activities can you provide expertise and support to others?

(SPEECH)
JAY WRIGHT: OK. I'm not seeing any hands up so I guess we'll try a new question. Shake it out with a new one here where-- there are some maybe statewide, maybe network meetings, CALPRO sessions, CASAS trainings, et cetera, where you think you might be able to help either as a trainer, or as an advisor, or if you don't really want to serve any of these roles, anything that Sudie and Carol and Jay should just do without your help, that would help you anyway.

(DESCRIPTION)
Sudie Whalen

(SPEECH)
SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you, Janice, for mentioning Bethany. We have her email address. We can ask her questions [LAUGHS] And then just to extend on the question, like when we're talking about things that you're doing as a data manager or with data, we're not just talking about just looking at student persistence and gains, but also, how are you using data to inform your programming and practices, whether it's PLCs in your IET pathway selections, how were you utilizing data student interest, labor market information?

There's so many different vast areas this fits into. How are you using data to be responsive to immigrants who are integrating in your programs and those kinds of things. So go ahead, Doreen.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Oh my gosh. How come the three-year plan didn't come up till now? [LAUGHS]

SUDIE WHALEN: It did earlier in the conversation but not--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

JAY WRIGHT: --a few times. It's come up in the chat, but in a [INAUDIBLE]

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Oh my gosh. So the three-year plan. Why are we all doing it in silos? It would be awesome if we could figure out some systems. And having that data sheet is great. That's an example of something that was made for everybody that we can all use, but I'm sure there are other things that we could do with our three-year plan. A CASAS three-year plan. I don't know. Something so that we aren't reinventing the wheel on filling in that data section.

The census reports. I guess that might be on that data sheet, but imagine if somebody just pulled a report for the entire state and each of us could grab our data for things that are on the three-year plan. [INAUDIBLE] could be on the data sheet, but it's an idea.

JAY WRIGHT: No, that's good-- I'm going to violate one of my internal things that I was going to not respond to any of this. But I'm going to break my own code and respond to that and say, yeah, that's a good idea. I will put that-- at least put it on the agenda, so to speak, with statewide WIOA TE and regional network meetings. I'll start putting that in the hopper with emphasis, like you said, on maybe ways to have share.

I mean, I think our regional WIOA meetings might be good for that just because that usually typically would have four or five consortia within one region, the 8 or 10 Bay Area consortia or the Bay Area meeting, in the four or five that are in the Inland Empire and are at my IE meeting and so on, so that might be a good way to bring different consortium heads together to do exactly what you're saying, Doreen.

(DESCRIPTION)
Carol Hirota

(SPEECH)
CAROL HIROTA: Yeah, and I'm going to jump in too, Jay. I think providing some expertise at the session I attended with you and Toybee on the number of students who do not have 12 hours. I think there's a lot of information that we can gather as far as gaps and what are we doing at our sites to lose these students, what is the reason we spend so much money on marketing and recruiting. But what about the ones that we lose?

So I think that information is really critical and would like more conversation on that.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Are there any messages or lessons that need to be shared with everyone about the last year and a half?

(SPEECH)
JAY WRIGHT: Anybody else? Kay? I'll take this one here. Are there any lessons learned? This is in conclusion here, so we've got 5 minutes or so. So whatever question you want to bring up, do. But the last one. Anything over the last year and a half and the last year and a half I guess means different things to different people. But it's a memorable year and a half whether we like it or not, I think.

So anything that's happened since, say, March 13, 2020, that is worth sharing, whether it relates just in general or anything specific about these data manager roles and responsibilities we've been discussing? Make sure you have a support system. Anybody with any pearls of wisdom that they've come up with over the last year that, gee, everybody will benefit if they hear it.

Surely, everybody has all kinds of pearls of wisdom like that.

(DESCRIPTION)
Ryan Whetstone

(SPEECH)
RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: Hey?

JAY WRIGHT: Yes.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: I'll do it. The only thing that just keeps bugging me is capturing all the elements. I'm always disturbed when I see zeros in spaces where I feel like I should see numbers. And my schools are just-- actually, they're doing pretty good but-- no, but there are spaces where I say I see this number is low. This cannot be the number that we have for-- OK, oh my god, I can't believe I can't remember the element, but like, formerly incarcerated. What's that data element?

And I see some really low number, and that's been like a discussion point to say, why is that number so low? We promote ourselves as being agencies that support this population or foster youth. Where is the breakdown here? Why are we not capturing this number? I hear anecdotal stories about these folks. So just making sure that we're capturing all the elements that tell our story so-- and quantify it.

I mean, it's-- we have qualitative too, but I think we quantify it also. And I had mentioned earlier about return on investment and Burke thank you for popping that piece in there. But that-- and it just-- just make sure we keep the messages getting down to the granular level, I wish we had a state data meeting that was almost like this-- a real troubleshooting-type meeting. The one where you just come and talk issues.

So my data group is evolving into that we're like, come on. They don't want to see my reports. They live in this dump every day. I mean, I can tell them what I see. But it's like, OK, Ryan, these are the issues we're having right now. So we need to work through this together, get somebody in here who can help us so we can keep this moving. So I would like to see a monthly statewide data-type meeting and that could also help some of the smaller schools or the lone wolves out there that need to connect.

And I think my schools could benefit from connecting to a broader network where we're-- it's a troubleshooting forum that we really can come in there in a safe space to talk about how we're handling certain things.

JAY WRIGHT: Thank you. Anybody with any other ideas like that? OK. I guess I'll just say, any general ideas? Anybody itching with any answers for which you have not received a question? I guess that's always the best way to end a reverse panel discussion is, hey, what questions were you anticipating having us ask you that we didn't bother asking?

Any questions like that or, gee, I've sat here for an hour and a half and nobody's even brought this up? Like Doreen's, how did we get an hour and 20 minutes into it without bringing up the three-year plan. Anything like that that might have been missing that you want to make sure we-- is there going to be a part 3? OK, well, I think Carol brought that up earlier that, yeah, there are some ideas for-- I don't know when the next latest and greatest statewide event will be. But, yeah, there's a lot of really good ideas for that, I do believe.

I'll need to pick up the pieces though before I can come up with a better, more specific answer to that one. All right. OK. Hand up, Doreen. Sorry.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: We have not discussed how to get people to take action with--

JAY WRIGHT: OK. So what's a reverse panel discussion? So you need not be the answer necessarily, Doreen, but I'll bring it back to all of you, what would your answer be to Doreen's question about how can we all take action and start-- that's a little bit related to the, what can you do for us? What do we all have to bring to the table that will enable all of us, including Jay, Sudie, and Carol to move forward with some of this?

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Oh, I'm not talking about action you're going to take. I'm talking about my consortium members.

JAY WRIGHT: OK.

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Show them data and show them data and show them data.

JAY WRIGHT: So how are people like Doreen and Ryan and Lydia going to lead their consortium into the charge perhaps?

DOREEN ODONOVAN: Yeah, yeah.

JAY WRIGHT: OK.

(DESCRIPTION)
Ryan Whetstone

(SPEECH)
RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: Well, I'd probably look for motivators. The report that's going to the legislature, I'll be looking for that, and I'll be looking for the data that's reflected in there and say to my members, here, this is where your data is going. This is who is looking at it. So just somewhere where it's actually being-- where it is being quantified and reported beyond a discussion with an in-house.

Somewhere where somebody says your data-- who is out there saying your data matters? And I think that's the elephant in the room. We're talking about data, but who, at a decisive level, says your data matters here, and we will make decisions based on it that will affect your institution, your school, your site, your students? And I understand that there's a consortium-level decision, but we're also seeing that those conversations are happening at the state level to really talk about really changing how they fund adult education.

We're looking at different ways to do it now, so who does our data really matter to beyond our region?

JAY WRIGHT: OK.

SUDIE WHALEN: Love that.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: Most definitely.

SUDIE WHALEN: [INAUDIBLE]

MARIA EINAUDI: Where we are--

SUDIE WHALEN: For our stakeholders who does it matter to? Who do we share with? Love that.

JAY WRIGHT: OK. Anybody want to step in and top that one to finish off? [LAUGHS] All right. Actually, Francisco, any comment? I just see your chat here. That seems like a really good answer, you know what? Anything to clarify in what you just brought up, Francisco? Sorry. Yeah, that is the drop-the-mic moment, but you had a good comment. What exactly did you mean by your comment though, Francisco?

FRANCISCO: Well, for going back to the original question, like what could we do at the local level? I would be to advocate for the importance of data and how data is important for our state report, federal report, and even for our local if we want our programs to be visible at the district level, having good data and being able to present that data at local board meetings.

That way, they know more about us, and then, we're starting to get some LCFF funds because of the advocacy that we've been showing like, these are how many students are enrolled in the program, these are how many graduate with a high school diploma, high school equivalency, these are how many students have gotten a job within the district who were former ESL students.

These are students who are learning, who are getting educated who are, in turn, helping your K-12 students succeed at the local school. So all that, showing it with data of how the students have persisted and also how they have gone from one level to another level of ESL or completed their high school diploma, high school equivalency. That has also allowed us to get some additional funds from the district to support our programs as well.

So I think data is important at the local level, of course, at the state level when we do all our reports, and obviously to the federal level too since with WIOA funds. So I think data is important at all three levels of what I call the branch [INAUDIBLE] of our education government.

(DESCRIPTION)
Carol Hirota

(SPEECH)
CAROL HIROTA: I have a question. Does it matter to anybody out there or have you seen that the influence of performance-based funding with federal dollars makes a difference than with your state funding when you look at your data? In regards to data? Is there any difference? Because there are some non-WIOA people that do not have WIOA. But those who have WIOA grant know that every data point could mean increased funding depending on your data accuracy. Any comments on that?

(DESCRIPTION)
Ryan Whetstone

(SPEECH)
RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: That's the driver.

CAROL HIROTA: Thanks Burke!

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: That is absolutely. That's absolutely a driver that resonates. And we still have schools that wasn't a driver for, that didn't get WIOA funding. And then that was like a wake-up call, like what? We didn't get it? Like, no, you didn't get it. So yes, and that just resounded with folks. And I was just thinking like, when those letters come out from CEE or the Chancellor's office from the top, making some kind of recommendations or saying that something is important, that matters. That matters.

So some top-down letters are good.

JAY WRIGHT: OK.

CAROL HIROTA: Thank you.

JAY WRIGHT: All right. I'm getting some prompting from the moderator that we're over time.

RYAN KEITH WHETSTONE: What?

JAY WRIGHT: And I think I probably need to pass it to Renee--

[LAUGHTER]

--but great comments. Doreen, Ryan, Carol, Sudie, Francisco, everybody. I will pass the baton over to Renee here though just so she can keep everything-- follow-through with what her task is and all that good stuff.

SUDIE WHALEN: I think this officially makes Renee the fun police though, right?

JAY WRIGHT: That's right, yeah. Well, somebody's got to do it, hey.

SUDIE WHALEN: Just kidding, Renee.

JAY WRIGHT: Somebody's got to be Team vFairs, and hey, that gets-- that Renee gets to be the lucky duck, I guess. Renee?

RENEE: Today, for this session, I am. Thank you so much. So I have put the evaluation link for today's sessions in the chat. Thank you for joining in today's session with Jay Wright and Carol Hirota and Sudie Whalen. Thank you so much. And thank you, all the participants, for chiming in and being so active in the chat box and on mic. You will be welcome-- you will also be able to access this recording and all sessions on the vFairs Platform shortly after processing.

Each session is going to be stored on the vFairs Platform and accessible to all registrants through the end of this year. You can locate any kind of resources related to this and other sessions in the agenda. And if you want to view the recording, that's where you're going to be able to see the recording as well. You would just play the Play button. Remediated recordings will be added to the caladulted.org website in the new year.

And all registrants will be notified by email and via the newsletter when they're available. So again, thank you, and go enjoy your lunch. I know that there's some exhibitors that are sharing right now, and you may want to join in with that or just enjoy a quiet lunch.

JAY WRIGHT: Thank you very much, everybody.

SUDIE WHALEN: Thank you.

RENEE: Thank you.