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Sunday report

Sunday Signal Report: August 23, 2026

This week's strong signal is a first-release 50-state interoperability scan: 33 active SLDS states, 10 Ed-Fi, 5 OneRoster. States built reporting infrastructure faster than they built the handshake districts can actually use.

Rob here

The data warehouse is not the handshake.

The strongest public signal this week is not a product launch. It is a measurement gap. Education Commission of the States classifies 33 states as having an active statewide longitudinal data system, with 8 more under construction. Project Unicorn's state-contact-verified production map reports Ed-Fi in 10 states and OneRoster in 5. Those numbers can sit next to each other. They should not be averaged.

Dark map of the United States with a single teal interoperability signal path

I published the first-release 50-state study and dashboard under Research. The useful read is already public in the sources: states invested in longitudinal systems, governance, and reporting before they made classroom-level data exchange boring, repeatable, and portable.

Primary lens this week: The Implementation Layer. Secondary: The Governance Gap. This is a research-release cluster, not a full seven-day scan of every scheduled X job.

Strong signal

33 SLDS states. 10 Ed-Fi. 5 OneRoster. Not one score.

What changed: a first-release 50-state interoperability scan is staged on ShowMeRob. ECS 2024 classifies 33 states as having an active SLDS and 8 as under construction. Project Unicorn reports live state-level Ed-Fi in Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin, and OneRoster in Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Rostering is the most useful operational use case in the extract, at 16 states, and still a minority. Why it matters now: procurement teams keep treating “we support Ed-Fi” as a finished answer. The study treats SLDS status, standards maps, rostering, governance documents, and unverified layers as separate evidence. Rob's take: the next fight is not a prettier warehouse. It is a published handshake a small district can actually use. Concrete implication: put standard, version, profile, direction, certification, exit rights, and roster latency into the next RFP instead of a vibe word.

Implementation

Kansas is the warning against rankings

What changed: the Kansas row in this extract is messy on purpose. ECS marks Kansas Not Found for an active SLDS in the 2024 establishment table, while the capacity table shows federal SLDS and WDQI grants and CEDS mapping across early learning, K-12, postsecondary, CTE, and P20W. Project Unicorn marks Kansas Not Reported across the tracked standards cells. Why it matters now: “not reported” is not “does not exist.” A ranking would hide that. Rob's take: the district question is not “Does Kansas have Ed-Fi?” It is what KSDE requires vendors to exchange, what the authoritative student identifier is, and whether a district can build once against a published contract. Concrete implication: do not let a blank cell in a national map become a local architecture decision.