Today the U.S. Department of Education released the results of a new monthly, nationally-representative, and high-quality survey about the impacts of COVID-19 on students and schools across the country. On behalf of the Data Coalition members, Data Foundation President Nick Hart issued the following statement about the release of initial survey results:

“When the Data Coalition called for the U.S. Department of Education to launch a School Pulse Survey in late 2020, the hope was that such a resource would provide critical information to decision-makers at the federal, state, and local level for protecting children and promoting learning at schools across the country. With the first release of data from the School Pulse Survey this week, the Department of Education is providing long-overdue leadership and a much-needed resource to support decision-making using data. The Data Coalition applauds the Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences,  National Center for Education Statistics and leaders across government who made this innovative open data resource possible.”

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The Data Coalition is an initiative of the non-profit Data Foundation. The membership-based initiative facilitates a strong national data community and advocates for responsible policies to make government data high-quality, accessible, and usable. The Data Coalition’s work unites the data communities that focus on data science, management, evaluation, statistics, and technology, including individuals in companies, nonprofit organizations, and academia.