Impact Stories

Jonas is a founding member of the Virginia Longitudinal Data System, also known as VLDS. She helped develop the system for research use, and has used VLDS and other data linked over time to help study state and local policies and practices. 

She and her colleagues have used longitudinal data to conduct research informing community college course placement, to demonstrate benefits of high quality preschool programs, and to create new leading and lagging indicators of success support decisions.

Jonas has also used longitudinal data to help educators ground new initiatives in data showing what's happening in their schools, learn about effective strategies, and plan for implementation of new approaches. Dr. Jonas has used the data to help educators reduce high school dropout rates, increase student attendance, change course taking patterns, and understand content-specific growth from year-to-year.

Read more Impact Stories:

• Changing when and how students are placed into Algebra I

• Establishing shared priorities to focus investments