K-12 Partnership

North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (DPI) Partnership

The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI) maintains a partnership with NDUS Institutional Research (NDUS-IR) for research and data services. Additionally, NDUS-IR and NDDPI collaborate with the North Dakota Information Technology Department (NDIT) on the Insights project. The Insights project is a set of statewide dashboards for K-12 school accountability, and is located at insights.nd.gov.

K-12 Surveys

If you anticipate you will need assistance from the IR team in analyzing survey results, please involve our staff in the survey design process. Below are resources to help you get started. The checklist highlights key considerations for creating and implementing successful surveys. We encourage you to draft some survey questions that we can help refine.

Survey Design Checklist

Read our blog article on creating high quality surveys.

K-12 Data Requests

NDUS-IR staff are responsible for handling data requests related to K-12 enrollment. To make a K-12 data request, contact the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction.

Guidelines for DPI Data Requests:

Use of Public Data Resources: Requestors are encouraged to first explore publicly available North Dakota K–12 education data before submitting a research request. Data can be accessed at:
- - ND Insights: https://insights.nd.gov/Data
  - North Dakota Department of Public Instruction: https://www.nd.gov/dpi/data
Compliance with Regulations: All research requests must comply with the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 45, Public Welfare, Department of Health and Human Services, Part 46, Protection of Human Subjects (2009). Learn more.
Respect for Policies: NDUS-IR and NDDPI respect established school and district policies, procedures, and protocols regarding the use of institutional, student, and personnel data for research purposes. If the requested data is specific to a school or district, the requestor may be referred to contact that school or district directly to ensure the research is sanctioned.
Coursework and Research Requests: NDUS-IR is not obligated to fulfill data requests for undergraduate or graduate coursework or research, including master’s theses and doctoral dissertations.
Student-Level Data: NDUS-IR will not fulfill research requests for student-level data, whether identified or de-identified.
Data Analysis Responsibility: When data is provided by NDUS-IR for a research request, NDUS-IR will not be responsible for any aspect of the data analysis. The individual requesting the data will be responsible for all corresponding data analysis.

Data Suppression & Privacy Thresholds:

The data available through ND Insights and the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction websites have been carefully suppressed to protect student privacy. For example, when reporting student proficiency data for small groups, exact values are often replaced with value ranges (e.g., “60–70% proficient”) to prevent the identification of individual students. Additionally, if a student group contains fewer than 10 individuals, no data is reported. This suppression helps ensure that personal information cannot be inferred, even indirectly, from the data.

When public data sources do not meet research needs and a request for row-level data is made to the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI), enhanced privacy protections are required. This includes the execution of a signed Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) between NDDPI and the researcher. To protect student confidentiality, no data will be reported for any student group with fewer than 25 individuals. This elevated suppression threshold helps mitigate the risk of identifying students in small populations, even when all personally identifiable information has been removed.

K-12 Dashboards & Data

K-12 Maps

Provides a breakdown of North Dakota K-12 schools by district, REAs, counties, legislative boundaries, and early childhood programs.

ND Insights