State Progress on Data Seen as Threatened

States have come a long way in building longitudinal data systems in just three years, but dire budget conditions won’t make it easy to finish them.

Forty-two states can now report uniform graduation-rate data. All but two states can match test records for individual students from year to year. And 29 states track individual students’ college-readiness test scores.

Yet states have a long way to go before they have the kinds of data systems that will help drive student improvement, according to the latest progress report from the 3-year-old Data Quality Campaign, which works...