For what purposes will the Department use the educator race data collected in EPIMS?
The Department uses data on the races of school and district staff only in the aggregate. The Department anticipates using the data to analyze the impact of policy decisions on issues such as the diversity of the Massachusetts educator workforce. The Department also plans to use the aggregated data to help schools and districts to recruit, hire, and support a diverse educator workforce. In addition to meeting the requirements of Massachusetts law, collecting the data through EPIMS will also assist in complying with U.S. Department of Education (USDE) requirements. Each year, the Department is required to submit a wide range of education data to the USDE as part of the EDFacts data initiative via the Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN). (For further information on EDFacts and EDEN, please see http://www.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/pbdmi/index.html.) Staff race data has been collected as part of the EDFacts initiative in some years, and the EPIMS data collection will enable the Massachusett
