Data Gap: What I Saw, What I Tried, and Why I Expanded Beyond It

When I first joined the early childhood data project, I believed deeply in the mission. Early childhood is foundational — the research is clear, the stakes are high, and the need for clarity is enormous. If we want to improve long‑term outcomes, we have to understand what’s happening in those first five years.

So- when I was invited to help build a database that would make early childhood information more accessible, I was all in. I brought my technical skills, my educator’s perspective, and my commitment to making data usable for real people.

But it didn’t take long to realize that the project wasn’t designed to support the kind of transparency or accessibility families and educators actually needed.

And it definitely wasn’t designed to value the people doing the work.

The Narrow Scope Problem

The first issue was scope.

The project focused exclusively on early childhood — not because that was the most logical or helpful boundary, but because that’s where the funding and politics were centered and what my office was about. Everything outside that window was treated as irrelevant.

But early childhood doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

You can’t understand kindergarten readiness without understanding K–12 transitions. You can’t understand K–12 outcomes without understanding teacher shortages. You can’t understand teacher shortages without understanding district finances. You can’t understand district finances without understanding enrollment patterns.

Every dataset touch another. Every decision affects the next stage of a child’s life. But the project was built like a silo: Early childhood only. Everything else was “out of scope.”

That’s not how children grow. That’s not how systems work. And that’s not how data should be organized. Add to that some data was not accessible or limited.

The Culture Problem: When Expertise Is Inconvenient

The second issue was culture.

I came in ready to collaborate — to ask questions, solve problems, and help build something meaningful. But instead of being treated as a partner, I was treated as a pair of hands. I was also, despite 40 years of experience and being a member of the team, treated as second class to the contractor that was hired… and yes I keep in my mind going back to I was right about a data issue, they were wrong and I was blamed.

My skills were welcome when they meant doing tasks. They were unwelcome when they meant influencing decisions.

They were especially unwelcome when I pointed out the problems with others work.

I raised concerns about data definitions. I asked for clarity on source files. I pointed out inconsistencies in the code. I suggested ways to make the interface more accessible.

And instead of curiosity, I got defensiveness. The reply when pointing out the lack of accessibility was ‘we can add that later’.

The moment that crystallized everything was the database code incident — the one where I identified an error, explained the fix, and was ultimately proven right. Instead of acknowledging the correction, the contractor complained about me.

Not about the code. Not about the problem. About me. And many months later when another issue came up, this time another person in my office who was insisting we change every hyphen in the database to an em-dash… I pointed out our database was old and wasn’t set up to easily make that change. I was working on rewriting it, but it would take time, since a lot of my time had been put into fixing the new employee’s code. The new employee working remotely who needed help constantly and was being paid a lot more than me with no experience (yep I’m still a little bitter over that one).

That was the moment I understood: I was expected to contribute labor, not leadership and my experience. And that’s not collaboration. That’s extraction.

The Data Problem: A System Built Backwards

The third issue was the data itself.

Early childhood data in Illinois is:

• fragmented across agencies
• inconsistent in definitions
• often outdated
• frequently locked behind PDFs
• published in formats that are technically “public” but practically unusable

We were trying to build a database on top of a foundation that wasn’t stable. And instead of addressing the structural issues, the project kept trying to patch them with workarounds.

I kept asking questions like:

• “Why are we using this metric if it’s defined differently across agencies?” Well really there were no metrics that were the same across agencies….
• “Why is this dataset only available as a PDF?” Can we extract the data.
• “Why are we building a tool that families can’t actually navigate?” It wasn’t a tool for families; it was a tool for decision makers…

But “that’s just how it is” is not a strategy. It’s an excuse.

The Moment I Realized the Project Couldn’t Become What It Needed to Be

One day, after yet another meeting where my concerns were brushed aside, I sat with a simple but uncomfortable truth:

Even if I did everything right, the project would still fall short — not because of the data, but because of the structure.

It was too narrow. Too siloed. Too resistant to feedback. Too invested in maintaining the status quo.

And too dismissive of the people doing the actual work.

After drawing a line, deciding I couldn’t take anymore (after both the EM-dash issue and the lash back for asking to work on my own work instead of spending so much time on fixing the employee hired to code) and leaving that department — That’s when the idea began to form: If the system wasn’t going to build the tool educators and families needed, maybe I could.

Not a tool limited to early childhood. Not a tool shaped by gatekeepers. Not a tool that required insider knowledge to navigate.

But a tool that brought together all Illinois education data — early childhood through postsecondary — in one accessible, transparent, educator‑centered ecosystem.

That idea became Future Path Data.

Why I Expanded Beyond Early Childhood

Early childhood is important. But it’s not the whole story. (Honestly it’s still a work in progress since it’s a hobby and I’m teaching full time also.)

If we want to understand student outcomes, we need the full picture:

• early childhood
• K–12
• teacher workforce
• district finances
• college and career pathways
• long‑term trends

You can’t fix what you can’t see. And you can’t see the system if you only look at one piece of it.

The early childhood project taught me that the problem wasn’t just missing data — it was missing context, missing connections, and missing accessibility.

So I am building something bigger.

The early childhood project showed me exactly what Illinois needed — not a narrow database, but a statewide, accessible, educator‑centered data ecosystem.