Last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science announced the awarding of $250 million in grants to twenty state education departments to design and implement a statewide longitudinal data system.

Among the twenty state education departments awarded funds, Washington received $17.3 million to assist in the development and implementation of systems that promote linking of data across time and databases, from early childhood into career, including matching teachers to students, while protecting student privacy and confidentiality consistent with applicable privacy protection laws.

The grant funds will be directed by Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Education Research and Data Center.

The grants are funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, a.k.a. stimulus dollars) of 2009.  The awardees were selected in a competition based on the merit of the applicants’ proposals and the funding available for the program. All fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands applied.