Community Award Spotlight
Mark Olofson and Paige Tooley took different paths into education data, but both came to see the same challenge: having data isn’t enough. Educators and education leaders need information they can understand and use to make better decisions.
That commitment to turning education data into practical resources is also what earned Mark and Paige recognition through the Ed-Fi Alliance Community Awards, which celebrate individuals and organizations whose leadership, collaboration, and contributions strengthen the Ed-Fi Community.
Today, Mark and Paige work at the Texas Education Agency, where they help turn education data into resources that educators and education leaders can put to use. One example is the TalentED Dashboards, which bring key workforce data together in one place so school system leaders can make informed decisions about hiring, staffing, and retention.
From Workforce Data to Workforce Decisions
For HR teams, school leaders, and district decision-makers, understanding the workforce can require pulling information from multiple reports and systems. That makes it harder to quickly answer important questions: Where are staffing gaps emerging? Are teachers and support staff staying? Where is turnover increasing? How are hiring patterns changing? The TalentED Dashboards are designed to make those answers easier to find.
By bringing staffing and hiring information together, the dashboards help school systems track hiring trends, monitor employment status and transitions, and identify retention and attrition patterns. Instead of spending time gathering information from multiple places, leaders can more quickly see what is happening across their workforce and decide where action may be needed.
Paige saw the need for this kind of approach firsthand while working in a school district. Schools relied on many different systems, and bringing information together could require significant time and manual work. The data existed, but getting it into a form people could actually use was not always easy.
Mark came to the work through education research and a focus on how better information can help schools support students. Together, their experiences reinforced an important idea: data becomes more valuable when people can easily find it, understand it, and use it.
Connecting the Pieces
The Ed-Fi Data Standard helps make this possible by providing a consistent way to structure and share education data across systems. By implementing the data standard, Texas can more easily connect information across systems and resources, including the Texas Student Data System, Insight to Impact Dashboards, Texas Education Exchange applications, and TalentED. The result is easier access to information that can help school leaders make practical workforce decisions.
Building Together
“The TalentED Dashboards, as well as other projects the Ed-Fi Alliance has been a part of, have shown the amazing work that can come from TEA having support and engagement from a variety of organizations,” Paige said.
That collaboration helps ensure the work starts with the questions education leaders actually need to answer, then makes the relevant information easier to access and use.
Supporting Their Community
Mark and Paige chose to extend their Community Award recognition beyond their work at the Texas Education Agency by directing their charitable donation to the Central Texas Food Bank.
“The Central Texas Food Bank provides access to healthy food for individuals across Central Texas,” Mark said. “I am personally happy to support their mission to help my friends and neighbors.”
For Mark and Paige, their work and their choice to give back share a common idea: resources have the greatest value when they reach the people who can put them to use.
Mark Olofson, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of Educator Data, Research, and Strategy at the Texas Education Agency. Paige Tooley, MBA, Ph.D. is Director of Project Management – Educator Data, Research, and Strategy at the Texas Education Agency.
