Common Ground on Better Data: Modernizing NAEP and State Data Systems

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics released the 2025 Long-Term Trend results for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). That report showed that 13-year-olds’ math and reading skills held steady but are still lower than they were in 2020 and 2012. Nine-year-olds’ scores are starting to show signs of recovery, but also remain below where they were in 2012.

Given today’s partisan rhetoric around education, it may seem as if there is little hope for bipartisan action to address widespread declines in education achievement. The data underscores the urgency of bipartisan action, but threats to the availability, quality, and reliability of data risk undermining action. If federal, state, and local policy leaders are going to strengthen support for students as they prepare for postsecondary education and careers, they need the most accurate information possible about where students are academically and where they need to get to if they are to succeed beyond high school.

There are (at least) two avenues with bipartisan potential to increase the availability of data. The first, a modernized NAEP, is a priority highlighted in the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on the American Workforce in its recent report, A Nation at Risk to A Nation at Work: The Case for a National Talent Strategy. The second, better support for modern, high-functioning statewide data systems, is both a priority for the Commission and what the Data Quality Campaign has been advocating for over two decades.

Modernizing NAEP

NAEP has long been hailed as the gold standard assessment of what students know and can do, providing a rigorous, consistent measure of student achievement across states. The main NAEP assessment differs from the Long-Term Trend assessment (which dates to the early 1970s), and includes a national report, as well as state reports. This proficiency gold standard is important because states have different definitions of academic proficiency, which makes it extremely difficult to compare student achievement levels. As reflected in the Commission’s report, modernizing NAEP should be a national priority so policymakers can see how states are doing, and thereby have timely and more actionable understanding of student outcomes and can design policy accordingly. As states pursue increasingly different approaches to accountability, graduation requirements, career-connected learning, and academic standards, NAEP must evolve to provide better data, more transparency, and more usable tools for decision makers.

How to Strengthen NAEP

As detailed in the Commission’s report, there are five comprehensive ways that the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), with the support of Congress, could strengthen NAEP to ensure better, more useful data for policymakers at all levels of government.

12th-grade state assessments and results in every state. Policymakers lack reliable national and state insight into student achievement at the end of high school. Currently, results are only available at the national level. Expanding NAEP to report state results for 12th-grade assessments would provide critical information on long-term student achievement trends and postsecondary readiness.

Expanding state-level reporting, including additional subjects. NAEP currently provides limited comparable state data outside core reading and math assessments. The federal government should support more robust state-level reporting in subjects such as civics to better understand which state policies and instructional approaches are producing the best outcomes. Expanding state data would also enable comparisons across student populations and educational experiences over time.

Retaining and rebuilding deep technical expertise within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the broader NAEP ecosystem. NAEP’s credibility depends on sophisticated psychometric expertise, sampling methodologies, longitudinal comparability, and rigorous statistical oversight. Preserving this institutional capacity inside IES, in addition to work with outside partners, is essential to maintaining public confidence in the nation’s gold-standard assessment system.

Modernizing tools to access NAEP results. While NAEP produces enormously valuable information, its data systems remain difficult for many policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to navigate. The current NAEP Data Explorer is powerful but often cumbersome and inaccessible to nontechnical users. A next-generation platform should improve usability, visualization tools, interoperability, and public accessibility.

Faster turnaround time. NAGB should work to accelerate national and state NAEP reporting timelines so that all results are released within six months of assessment.

The good news is that NAGB recently adopted a proposal to modernize NAEP that addresses some of these issues, including a state opt-in for the civics assessment in 8th and 12th grade as well as 12th-grade reading and math. This proposal is the first step towards advancing the recommendations in the Commission report, and we will continue to advocate for resources and staffing at the National Center for Education Statistics to ensure that the assessments grow with an appropriate level of funding and staffing.

Modernizing State Data Systems

Modernizing NAEP could ensure there is accurate data on the academic progress of students across the country. Contextualizing that data and connecting it to postsecondary and career outcomes in every state to better understand learner pathways and what drives academic success and economic mobility requires robust statewide education and workforce (P-20W) data systems. The leaders of those systems are working hard to evolve and modernize them, but they need federal support, time, attention, and funding, to be successful. As the Data Quality Campaign has long advocated, that work begins with encouraging and incentivizing the policy conditions necessary for strong P-20W data systems.

How to Strengthen State Data Systems

We offer three ways that Congress should support states in strengthening and modernizing their data collection and sharing.

Distribute funds with broader, more flexible uses. Funding is currently spread across programs in ways that discourage integrated systems. A modern funding system should be more flexible and less siloed. For example, the Statewide Longitudinal Data System and Workforce Data Quality Initiative grant programs could be combined into one data modernization grant program with enhanced resources and focus. This approach would recognize the reality of how state data systems work now, integrating data across education, workforce, and human services agencies, not their original siloed nature.

Expand eligible applicants at the state level. The scope of possible grantees for a modernized data grant should similarly reflect current realities. That means expanding who can control funding beyond state educational agencies to also include governors, P-20W data councils, and statewide data governing bodies.

Set clear program objectives. While funds need to be as flexible as possible, their primary aim should be improving cross-agency uses of data. For example, priorities for funding should include things such as improving connections between education and workforce data to better understand and make transparent individuals’ education and workforce journeys as well as the relative value of different pathways; adopting structured, open, linked, and interoperable data formats to more easily share data within and among states; and implementing enhanced privacy and cybersecurity protections to ensure individuals’ data remains private.

By modernizing the approach to statewide data systems and modernizing the underlying mechanism for capturing data on student achievement, leaders could better understand where and how schools, districts, and states are succeeding and where and for what they might need assistance. Fortunately, there is bipartisan interest in modernizing both systems. Building on that support and improving the data available will help students succeed as they navigate their education-to-career pathways.

Kate Tromble is Vice President, Federal Policy at the Data Quality Campaign, a national nonprofit policy and advocacy organization focused on education and workforce data.

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