In 2026, state legislators across the country advanced legislation that supports secure, timely access to education and workforce data. As state leaders respond to changing education, workforce, and economic needs, they must ensure that they have strong, sustainable data ecosystems that can support decisionmaking and improve student and worker outcomes. A strong data infrastructure—including a well-supported statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) that connects data across sectors and generates insights—is critical to this effort. This year, state policymakers from both sides of the aisle advanced efforts to strengthen cross-agency governance of SLDSs, expand SLDS capacity to meet evolving state priorities, and improve the underlying data within these systems.
This year’s review highlights three main themes we saw in states:
Cross-Agency Data Governance Is the Most Important Step Toward Making SLDSs More Accessible and Useful for People
Strong cross-agency data governance helps ensure that states can securely link education and workforce data within their SLDSs and use that data to generate insights that support student success, strengthen pathways into careers, and inform policy decisions. Georgia and New Jersey both codified cross-agency data governance in law this year, and Ohio introduced similar legislation.
State Leaders Should Regularly Revisit an SLDS’s Purpose and Scope
States with robust SLDSs and strong governance structures aren’t complacent. Indiana and Maryland both amended their SLDS statutes this year to expand the audiences and purposes their systems serve, and DC introduced legislation to do the same.
States Should Take Steps to Get a Fuller Picture of Their Workforce by Improving Wage Data
At least four states—California, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Virginia—introduced or passed legislation to enhance unemployment insurance (UI) wage data collections, unlocking new insights into P–20W pathways, workforce supply and demand, and the return on investment (ROI) of education and training programs.
