In 2022, state legislators crafted new policies that govern the use of data from early childhood through workforce. DQC’s review of data-related legislation found that this year’s bills addressed two realities: people need data and to understand and address emerging issues, state leaders have new data needs and policy goals.
Moving forward, state leaders must continue to make investments in their state’s data systems and continue to create policies that will ensure that everyone—from individuals to policymakers—can use data to support decisionmaking.
data-related bills were introduced in 35 states.
of these bills were signed into law in 17 states.
DQC has been tracking data-related legislation across the country since 2014. In that time, we’ve learned what makes data legislation promising.
This year, we saw bills that fell into three broad categories:
Encouraging practices. Legislative efforts this year pursued a number of these practices including cross-agency data governance, engaging with communities for their feedback, data disaggregation, and clarifying data privacy policies to account for new practices.
Areas in which to proceed with caution. Some legislation contained well intentioned data efforts that can easily slip into compliance-oriented, box-checking exercises. These types of bills need to be carefully crafted to ensure they have their intended impact: promoting the value of data.
Provisions to avoid. In some cases, legislative efforts as written will not move states toward data goals and may even move states backward. Efforts of this kind should be avoided.
Where should states go from here?
As the year comes to a close and states look toward 2023, we encourage legislators to continue making investments in their state’s data systems and create policies that will ensure that everyone can use data to support decisionmaking. Without these ongoing investments, state data systems will not meet the moment.
DQC’s Principles for Education Data Legislation serves as a guide to creating legislation that builds trust in data, makes it useful to communities, and supports policy goals.
Education Data Legislation Review: What Happened in 2022?
The Data Quality Campaign tracks legislation in all 50 states and the District of Columbia with provisions that expressly affect the collection and use of education data. The numbers included in this summary reflect bills introduced by July 1, 2022 and laws enacted by July 31, 2022.
DQC has been tracking and summarizing legislation since 2014. Click to see our reviews for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
