Student Well-Being Data: What State Learning Agendas Need

When Idaho piloted the Education Department’s Learning Agenda Playbook, it chose student well-being as its priority. Many states share that concern, and it’s one of the hardest areas to build evidence around, because so much of the data lives in district incident and case records.

Why student well-being is a learning agenda priority

According to Idaho’s case study, the state’s team framed student well-being around mental health, behavior, safety and engagement. The topic held up well against the playbook’s selection criteria: it reflected concerns raised by constituents and legislators, built on existing partnerships, and came with open questions about whether current efforts were being implemented well and working.

The team, led by Superintendent Debbie Critchfield and Chief Operating Officer Michelle Clement Taylor, drew on leaders from curriculum, federal programs, assessment, special education, and student health and safety. One early discovery came from simply listing what the department was already doing: an initiative inventory revealed overlaps and gaps across offices. Critchfield told K-12 Dive the pilot improved communication across the department’s teams.

That lesson applies well beyond Idaho. Well-being work is spread across programs — counseling, safety, special education, discipline, civil rights — and so is the information about it.

What makes a well-being question answerable?

Step 4 of the playbook asks teams to write learning questions that are actionable, focused, timely, feasible, comprehensive and relevant, and tied to a real decision. It separates short-term questions, answered with existing data to guide near-term choices, from long-term questions that require sustained evidence-building.

“Is student well-being improving?” fails most of those tests. It’s too broad to answer and too vague to act on. Questions become answerable when they name what is being measured, for whom, and which decision the answer will inform.

Example learning questions about well-being and safety

The questions below are our own examples, written to the playbook’s criteria. They are not taken from the playbook or from any state’s learning agenda.

• How do bullying and harassment reports vary by district, grade band and time of year, and how long do they take to resolve? A short-term, descriptive question that could guide where the state targets prevention support next year.
• Which districts complete threat assessment follow-up within their own required timelines, and what gets in the way? An implementation question that could shape training and technical assistance.
• How long does it take to move from a Section 504 request to a decision, and how much does that vary across districts? A question that could inform monitoring priorities and guidance.
• Do students who receive supports after a reported incident have fewer repeat incidents over the following school year? A long-term question that could inform whether to expand a support program.

The data each question depends on

Every one of these questions needs the same basic ingredients from districts:

• Consistent categories. A bullying report in one district has to mean the same thing as a bullying report in another.
• Dates for each stage. When the report came in, when each required step happened, and when the case closed.
• Outcomes. What was decided, and what supports or consequences followed.
• Context without identities. School level, grade band and other attributes the state can analyze without seeing student names.

Step 3 of the playbook asks teams to inventory existing data and identify where evidence is limited, mixed or missing. For well-being and safety, that inventory often turns up the same problem: the information exists, but not in a form anyone can analyze.

Where well-being data gets stuck

In many districts, incident and case information is still collected on fillable PDFs, tracked in spreadsheets and discussed over email. Each school or department may use its own form. Dates are recorded inconsistently, outcomes live in someone’s notes, and a situation that involves both a bullying report and a Section 504 question may be tracked in two places by two people.

None of that stops a district from responding to an individual student. It does stop a district from answering a simple question about patterns, and it makes a statewide view nearly impossible. When Bullying Reports Get Lost in the System shows what can happen to individual reports along the way.

Our conversation with a prospective client describes how common these methods still are.

Keeping student privacy intact

A state learning agenda on well-being doesn’t require the state to see individual students’ cases. The example questions above are about patterns: volume, timing, consistency and outcomes. Those can be answered with aggregated, de-identified information, while detailed records stay with the district staff responsible for each case. Building that separation in from the start makes it easier for districts to participate.

How case management software helps

When districts manage incidents and cases in a shared system with common categories, dated steps and recorded outcomes, the data a learning agenda needs is produced as part of the daily work instead of a separate reporting exercise. Casearoo supports this at the state level with roll-up reporting across districts, scoped so each district sees only its own cases while state staff see patterns across them.

We explain that model in State Visibility Into District Incident and Case Data.

Key takeaways

• Idaho’s learning agenda framed student well-being around mental health, behavior, safety and engagement.
• Answerable well-being questions name what is measured, for whom and which decision the answer informs.
• Most well-being and safety questions depend on district incident and case records with consistent categories, dates and outcomes.
• That data is often trapped in PDFs, spreadsheets and email, where it can’t be analyzed.
• States can learn from patterns without seeing individual students’ cases.

Sources

1. Learning Agenda Playbook, “Building an Evidence-Driven Approach to Student Well-Being” (Idaho case study)
2. Learning Agenda Playbook, “Step 3: Identify Key Knowledge Gaps”
3. Learning Agenda Playbook, “Step 4: Develop Learning Questions to Drive Decisions”
4. K-12 Dive, “Shrinking Education Department Offers State Decision-Making Playbook”, September 11, 2026

How Casearoo handles this: case management for state education agencies.