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Grants to USA and territories state education agencies for research studies that analyze and improve education. Applicants must leave several weeks to complete required registrations prior to applying. Funding is intended for projects in one of three data-use priority areas: infrastructure, education choice, or equity. Proposals should enhance the ability of statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS) to address the needs of at-risk students, including children and youth who are or have been homeless or in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems. States do not have to include information about how they would do this work in the application, but merely may indicate that they are interested in this work.

The SLDS program awards grants to SEAs to design, develop, and implement statewide longitudinal data systems to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, disaggregate, and use individual student data. The Department's long-term goal in operating the program is to help all States create comprehensive P-20W (early learning through workforce) systems that foster the generation and use of accurate and timely data, support analysis and informed decision-making at all levels of the education system, increase the efficiency with which data may be analyzed to support the continuous improvement of education services and outcomes, facilitate research to improve student academic achievement and close achievement gaps, support education accountability systems, and simplify the processes used by SEAs to make education data transparent through Federal and public reporting.

For information about SLDS priorities - infrastructure, education choice, and equity - see: https://ies.ed.gov/funding/pdf/2020_84372.pdf#page=5

Applicants awarded funding under any of the three priorities would be eligible to receive additional funding to assist the Department in testing a proposed school- level poverty measure. This new measure is based on student addresses instead of participation in free and reduced price meals. States that elect to participate in this project would need to create a geocoded student address directory and join student geocodes to other geographic information provided by NCES. States opting to participate in this project would use their newly combined information to produce summaries of the existing (e.g. free and reduced price lunch) and proposed poverty measures and share these summaries with the Department.

Applicants should budget for travel and accommodations for two senior project staff to attend a two-day meeting each year in Washington, DC with other grantees and Institute staff to discuss accomplishments, problems encountered, and possible solutions/improvements. State educational agencies that receive grants must agree to participate in an evaluation of the SLDS program, if the Department decides to conduct such an evaluation. The agreement of a State to participate in such an evaluation would extend to an evaluation conducted after termination of the State’s assistance under this program.