Last week, Sara wrote about the introduction of the New Essential Education Discoveries (NEED) Act in the U.S. Senate and how it would establish a National Center for Advanced Development in Education (NCADE). This week, Sara is joined by Kate Tromble, Vice President, Federal Policy at the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) to elevate another key element of this bill: Its attention to modernizing Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDSs).
Robust and reliable data are the backbone for strong research and development (R&D). NCADE – or any other education R&D endeavor, for that matter – will only be as good as the data it leverages to better understand what works, for whom, and in what conditions. That’s why the NEED Act addresses data infrastructure and makes improvements to the SLDS program.
SLDSs connect individual-level data from across sectors (e.g., early childhood, K-12 education, postsecondary education, workforce) and over multiple years to help researchers, policymakers, and the public make well-informed decisions. When states invest in building their own SLDS with appropriate data governance, privacy protections, and data linkages across sectors, they “improve data quality, produce more meaningful measures of student progress and success, and promote transparency.” Check out DQC’s vision for robust SLDSs to learn more.
Through a program managed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the federal government offers SLDS grants to state education agencies (SEAs). These are three- to five-year competitive grants that help SEAs design, develop, and sustain an SLDS. The program is built on the premise that “better decisions require better information.” Since the program was created in 2005, every state and the District of Columbia has benefited from SLDS grants.
While SLDSs exist throughout the country, the quality of each varies significantly. According to the Education Commission of the States, fewer than half of the states have a full SLDS or P-20W data system – meaning they incorporate pre-K, K-12, postsecondary, and workforce data. Of those states that have a data system, albeit a less robust one, only 33 have a publicly available data dictionary that allows people to understand what data elements are contained within their system. There are opportunities across the U.S. to make SLDSs more robust, accessible, and usable to policymakers and the public alike.
The NEED Act would strengthen SLDSs in a few different ways. First, it would diversify the types of entities eligible to apply for SLDS grants. In addition to SEAs, governors and other data governance bodies (e.g., independent data centers or state workforce development boards) would be eligible to apply for SLDS funds. Since states have moved to expand their SLDSs beyond K-12 data, opening eligibility reflects the current reality of the field. It also encourages broader state investment in these systems.
Additionally, the NEED Act would encourage the use of SLDS funds to:
Modernize data infrastructure and analytics capacity to integrate data across education, workforce, nutrition, and other social service systems.
Promote linkages across multiple states and their SLDSs to produce a richer trove of data for research, development, and policymaking.
Ensure the technical quality, including validity and reliability, of SLDS data.
Meet Federal requirements with respect to protecting the privacy of individuals, including student privacy.
Share data in usable, actionable formats and provide training to help policymakers, educators, and other stakeholders use SLDS data to drive better policy and instructional decision-making.
We are encouraged by the bipartisan, bicameral support the NEED Act has garnered and look forward to working together and with many others to get it passed. With better data infrastructure, we can look forward to better-informed decision-making in classrooms, legislative bodies, and research labs. Ultimately, that’s good for students and society.
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