The U.S. Department of Education has announced the 2012 competition for the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program. Grants will range from $1 million to $5 million and will last for a three-year period. Final amounts will depend on the final appropriation and state applications.

State education agencies that did not receive an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant are eligible to apply. The grants require states to develop and implement statewide data systems containing the elements specified in the America COMPETES Act. This year’s grants also require states to focus their grant applications on one of the following three priorities:

1. Early childhood: Grants under this priority may be used to develop and link early childhood data with the state’s K–12 data system. This coordinated early learning data system must include the child, program, and workforce data elements described as Essential Data Elements in the Race to the Top–Early Learning Challenge program. Maximum grant award $4 million.
2. K–12: Grants under this priority may be used to design, develop, and implement a statewide, longitudinal kindergarten through grade 12 data system. Maximum grant award $5 million.
3. Postsecondary and/or workforce: Grants under this priority may be used to develop and link postsecondary and/or workforce data to the state’s K–12 data system. At a minimum, this must include the postsecondary data required by the America COMPETES Act elements, and “states are encouraged to develop their own postsecondary data and not simply purchase this data from an organization external to the agencies partnering under this application.” Maximum grant award $4 million.

Within each priority area, states must use grant funds to address minimum capacity requirements in three categories: governance and policy requirements, technical requirements, and data use requirements.

Applications are due December 15, 2011. The anticipated start date for the grants is May 1, 2012.

Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manager

Tags: accountability, ARRA, Data, federal grants, funding, postsecondary, Secondary

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Public Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.