At the recent National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA) in Denver, state leaders from South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Delaware shared how they’re working toward a common goal: putting data to work to help students succeed in the classroom.
For these leaders, making data actionable isn’t about dashboards or compliance. It’s about getting timely, relevant information into the hands of educators and decision-makers so they can support student learning in real time.
Their stories highlighted what it takes to build data systems that serve both local and statewide needs. Here are five practical takeaways for state CIOs looking to make data more timely, usable, and impactful.
1. Interoperability isn’t a tech project. It’s a student impact project.
As Dan Ralyea, chief information officer for the South Carolina Department of Education, put it: “The long-term goal is to deliver information in a meaningful way to the classroom so that we change the impact on student lives.”
That’s why South Carolina rebuilt its data infrastructure from the ground up, starting with the needs of its smallest district. The goal wasn’t just better reporting. It was making sure that any teacher, with one login and one view, could see a student’s full picture, from chronic absenteeism to growth on assessments, and take action.
This kind of insight requires more than reporting. It takes a connected system where data flows securely and seamlessly across platforms and comes together in one place. That’s what we mean by interoperability.
2. The data hub model works for everyone – from the statehouse to the classroom.
Leaders in Wisconsin and Delaware are proving that the right infrastructure can meet the needs of both state education agencies and school districts.
Lucas Munz, chief information officer for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, described how the state’s data model eliminates manual student matching, simplifies rostering, and ensures timely access to data. “It’s as close to real-time as we’re going to get, without any manual intervention.”
Adrian Peoples, chief data officer at the Delaware Department of Education, said it simply: “The goal is to stop being the middleman.” Rather than acting as a go-between for districts and vendors, Delaware has created a structure where information flows directly, securely, and consistently.
This is the promise of the data hub model. In plain terms, it’s a central system that collects, organizes, and shares data between schools, vendors, and the state. The hub gives states what they need for accountability and compliance, while giving districts timely, usable data they can act on. It also scales easily. States can avoid investing in one-off solutions, and districts face less vendor friction and technical hassle.
3. Data gets better when people use it.
Cleaner data doesn’t come from tighter rules alone – it comes from use. When data is embedded in everyday decisions, people notice when something’s off.
In South Carolina, teachers began using attendance and assessment data directly in classroom tools. That surfaced issues immediately. “A fourth-grade student showing up as a 73-year-old man” was one memorable example. The more educators use the data, the more accurate it becomes, and the more invested everyone becomes in keeping it that way.
4. Shared standards and smart reuse save time and money.
Every state has dealt with the same challenges: different vendors using different file formats, one-off integrations, and time-consuming custom work. But when states and vendors take a consistent approach to how data is organized and exchanged, things move faster and duplication is minimized. Districts spend less time troubleshooting. Vendors don’t have to start from scratch. And states can focus more on using data, not managing it.
That consistency also opens the door to bigger opportunities. In South Carolina, it made it possible to bring together data from nearly 50 assessments, standardize it, and make it usable for both research and classroom instruction, all without pushing extra work onto districts. In Wisconsin, vendors are now building their products to connect directly with the state’s data ecosystem instead of individual student information systems, simplifying integrations for vendors and school districts.
5. Timely data changes everything.
No matter how complete a dataset is, if it arrives too late, it can’t shape what happens in the classroom. In Wisconsin, districts now receive assessment results through the same platform used for rostering, without delays or manual uploads. Teachers get what they need when they need it, shifting how they plan interventions, group students, and prioritize support.
Final Thought: Build for action, not just compliance.
It’s always worth stepping back to ask: What can this data tell us? Who needs it, and when?
The states leading this work aren’t adopting interoperability to check a box. They’re doing it to serve students better, faster, and more consistently – across districts, systems, and school years.
The Ed-Fi Alliance exists to support that work. If you’re ready to make your data more actionable, we’re here to partner with you.
Let’s stop just collecting data. Let’s put it to work.
