The U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences has awarded a total of $52.8 million in grants to 14 state education departments for the design and implementation of statewide longitudinal data systems.

Intended to help the states generate and use accurate and timely data to meet reporting requirements, support decision-making and aid education research, the grants range from $1.5 million to nearly $6 million and extend for three years.

The grantees will be expected to submit annual and final reports on the status of the development and the implementation of these systems.

The awards were announced by Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, director of the Institute, at a recent data summit in Richmond, Va., which was attended by chief state school officers from across the country. The Institute is the research, evaluation and statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

Winners of the data system grants, and their three-year totals, are:

Alaska, $3.5 million.
Arkansas, $3.3 million.
California, $3.3 million.
Connecticut, $1.5 million.
Florida, $1.6 million.
Kentucky, $5.8 million.
Maryland, $5.7 million.
Michigan, $3 million.
Minnesota, $3.3 million.
Ohio, $5.7 million.
Pennsylvania, $4 million.
South Carolina, $5.8 million.
Tennessee, $3.2 million.
Wisconsin, $3.1 million.

The grants are authorized by the Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002, Title II of the statute that created the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). All 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia were eligible to apply, and 45 applications were received by IES.

The grantees were selected in a competition based on the merit of their proposals. The proposals were assessed based on aspects such as the need for the project, the quality of the project's design, and the quality of the management plan. Further, the proposal peer reviewers looked at how the respective projects promoted the timely generation of accurate data for local, state,and Federal reporting requirements.

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