New York Statewide Longitudinal Data System

Statewide Longitudinal Data System

Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) connect information across early childhood, K–12 education, postsecondary education, and the workforce.

SLDSs provide cross-sector data insights that help leaders answer critical policy questions, direct resources effectively, and better support individuals throughout their education and career pathways.

(Source: Data Quality Campaign).

Our Core Equity Principles

We urge state leaders to use these principles to guide the creation of an SLDS and its governance; ensuring it centers racial and economic equity while meeting the needs of students, families, educators, school and district leaders, researchers, and advocates.

1. Engage Students, Families, and Communities in System Design and Governance

To create a system that serves people, not just institutions, policymakers must center the voices of students, families, and communities. This includes engaging a broad range of stakeholders during every stage: design, implementation, and governance. It requires building a governing body that includes agency leaders, technical experts, and community representatives. Finally, students and families must be included to have a say in how their data is collected, protected, and used.

2. Establish Strong Privacy Protections

Leaders must treat data privacy not as a compliance issue, but as a fundamental commitment to trust. This requires establishing clear protocols on who can access data and under what conditions and implementing routine privacy training for data handlers. The state must also prohibit the collection of highly sensitive data (such as immigration status) and prevent law enforcement from using education data for surveillance or enforcement purposes.

Before introducing new data elements, leaders must conduct transparent public consultations, clearly explain why the data is needed, how it will be used, and what safeguards will protect it.

3. Incorporate Early Childhood Indicators

To support children from the start, New York must integrate early childhood data into the SLDS. Agencies currently collect data on prenatal health, maternal care, early learning, and family economic supports, but in silos. By aligning this data with K-12 and geographic information, the SLDS can help policymakers:

Understand what children need to thrive,
Design more effective early childhood programs, and
Empower families to make informed decisions based on their child’s needs.

New York has an opportunity to lead nationally by creating a unified, birth-through-career data system that connects early care, education, and family support systems.

4. Expand and Standardize Data Disaggregation

The SLDS must disaggregate data across all age groups, from infants to adult learners. It should also prioritize cross-tabulated data that reflects intersecting identities, such as race, language, income, disability, and foster care status, whenever privacy protections allow.

The SLDS must also allow users to disaggregate across sectors and time, allowing analysts, advocates, and leaders to trace outcomes from early childhood through the workforce.

5. Promote Data Literacy and Democratized Access

Policymakers must ensure that data is accessible to not only agencies and researchers, but also students, families, educators, and community organizations to understand and use data for advocacy and decision-making.

This requires investing in:

Training programs for educators and counselors to use data with an asset-based lens,
Resources that help parents and adult learners interpret data, and
Public-facing dashboards and tools designed for community use.

6. Use Data to Drive Systemic, Equity-Oriented Change

New York’s data already shows what many communities experience every day: inequities in college readiness, graduation rates, and economic mobility. Data alone will not solve these issues but provides important insights into where our current systems are not meeting the needs of students and families, particularly those of color and from low-income backgrounds.

A well-designed SLDS will:

Highlight systemic failures, not individual deficits,
Reveal the impact of policy decisions across systems and time, and
Guide the development of targeted, effective interventions.

To be effective, the SLDS must help leaders look beyond surface-level gaps and focus on root causes, including structural racism, economic injustice, and underinvestment in public systems.

Latest Resource

Poll: Clear Data, Better Decisions: What New Yorkers Need from a Statewide Education Data System.

Despite New York’s national standing as one of the largest education systems in the country, it remains one of the few states without an SLDS.

This statewide poll reveals widespread support among New York parents and voters for the development of a Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) that connects education and workforce data from early childhood through college and into careers. At the same time, the findings emphasize the urgent need for equity, privacy protection, and community partnership in the system’s design.

Data Snapshot

of voters expressed support for SLDS with a slightly more detailed explanation.

EdTrust-New York poll, 2025

of all voters say they would view their state legislator more favorably if they supported SLDS.