Ensure Your District is Data Ready with this Free Playbook

Unprecedented funding has flowed into districts over the last several years as part of pandemic support and recovery efforts. As a result of this increased investment in technology, schools are generating more valuable data than ever—but much of that data isn’t readily available and actionable because it’s siloed in systems that aren’t connected to each other.

Simultaneously, with NAEP scores showing declining progress across the United States, school districts are trying to understand the scope of educational inequities and narrow equity gaps. However, it’s challenging to understand the root cause of these issues and to determine how best to address them without whole child insights made possible through interoperability—the seamless, secure, and controlled exchange of data between applications.

4 Key Considerations Around Data Interoperability for 2024

As school districts navigate a new year, building a foundational understanding of data equity and data interoperability is critical to establish holistic policies, practices, and systems that support learner variability and address the needs of historically and systematically excluded learners. By sharpening their lens on holistic data, districts can ensure that data becomes an authentic and integrated part of district culture and decision making all year long. Below are some key considerations to keep in mind:

1. Good data governance—which the U.S. Department of Education defines as “clearly outlining policies, standard procedures, responsibilities, and controls surrounding data activities…to ensure that information is collected, maintained, used, and disseminated in a way that protects the individuals’ rights to privacy, confidentiality, and security, while producing timely and accurate statistical data”—is critical to maintaining a secure, accessible, and reliable data infrastructure and is foundational to designing and implementing data interoperability projects. However, Project Unicorn’s 2023 State of the Sector Report indicates that this remains a significant challenge for school districts. Most (65.38%) respondents still need to define data governance goals and objectives at the organizational level.
2. Many educators are excited about the potential for AI to finally help us realize our goals of creating personalized learning journeys for students. But to fully personalize learning, we need to establish seamless, secure data flow between platforms so that educators can get a holistic view of students and effectively support students where they are.
3. Interoperability is also critical to enable us to transform assessment. It enables educators to see learning patterns across platforms, revealing strengths, potential challenges, and engagement. According to Erin Mote, executive director and co-founder of InnovateEDU, “Data interoperability can give educators a superpower to unlock the full potential of every learner.”
4. Interoperability and adherence to data standards can and should be a key consideration for procurement decisions. Many district leaders are unaware of the real long-term costs associated with a lack of interoperability. Project Unicorn has created an Interoperability Certification to help district leaders identify products that prioritize interoperability. CoSN’s case study–The Michigan Data Hub: A Strategic Alignment and ROI Study–offers insight into these hidden costs. The study’s authors found that “data management by [Michigan] districts requires both personnel effort and technology costs totaling over $160 million per year statewide. More than $61 million per year is spent on data quality, data completeness, and other general data management tasks, while $64 million per year is spent enabling key internal systems within districts to talk to each other.”

An Actionable Resource for Districts