K-12 Interoperability Is Not One Problem

Bottom line

K-12 interoperability is not one problem and it is not one score.

The strongest national pattern is this: states have invested heavily in longitudinal data systems, reporting infrastructure, and governance, but far fewer states show public evidence of the standards that make classroom-level data exchange boring, repeatable, and portable.

• 33 states are classified by the Education Commission of the States as having an active statewide longitudinal data system; 8 more are under construction.[4]
• Project Unicorn’s state-contact-verified production/deployment map reports Ed-Fi use in 10 states and OneRoster use in 5 states.[1][2]
• The clearest operational use case is rostering, with 16 states reporting at least one live standard or statewide system in that use case. That is still a minority of the 50 states.[1][2]
• 31 states publicly specify SLDS governance, 25 publish formal SLDS privacy policies, 28 publish regular reports from cross-agency linkages, and 22 publish a public data dictionary.[5][6][7]
• Statewide SSO, persistent common student identifiers, open API/data-portability rules, and state-level vendor-certification requirements remain unverified research layers in this first release. They are not being inferred from the existence of an SLDS.

The quiet problem is not that education lacks data. It is that every layer has a different handshake.

What this study measures

This study deliberately keeps the signals separate. A state can have a strong longitudinal system and weak classroom rostering. It can use Ed-Fi for reporting without requiring OneRoster from vendors. It can publish a privacy policy without offering an API that a district can actually use.

Project Unicorn defines its map as state-level use in production or deployment and explicitly excludes ordinary district adoption.[1] OneRoster itself supports CSV and REST exchange for people, courses, enrollments, grades, and resources.[9] Ed-Fi describes its standard as a common language for moving data among systems and separately documents the use of Ed-Fi certification in state RFPs.[10][11]

The national picture

1. State data systems are ahead of state interoperability standards

The ECS 2024 comparison identifies 33 active SLDSs and 8 systems under construction among the 50 states in this release.[4] That is meaningful infrastructure. It is also not the same thing as a statewide interoperability contract.

The ECS data shows deeper institutionalization around the SLDS layer:[4][5][6][7]

• 31 states publicly specify data governance.[6]
• 16 publish a governance manual or equivalent public process document.[6]
• 25 publish a formal SLDS privacy policy.[6]
• 28 publish recurring reports derived from cross-agency linkages.[7]
• 22 publish a public data dictionary.[5][8]
• 35 have a non-empty CEDS-mapping field in the ECS capacity table.[5]

Interpretation: states are getting better at governing and reporting data before they are getting better at making data exchange portable for every downstream school system and vendor.[4][5][6][7]

2. Ed-Fi has the clearest state-level footprint

Project Unicorn reports Ed-Fi use in these 10 states:

Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin.[1][2]

Ed-Fi appears in three different ways in the source map:[1][2]

• 10 states report alignment/schema use.[1][2]
• 9 report infrastructure use.[1][2]
• 8 report use for rostering.[1][2]
• 8 report use for state compliance reporting.[1][2]
• 7 report use for assessment.[1][2]

Those counts are not a maturity score. They show that “using Ed-Fi” can mean different things depending on where it sits in a state’s architecture.

3. OneRoster is visible, but not dominant at the state layer

Project Unicorn reports OneRoster use in Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin.[1][2]

OneRoster appears in five states for assessment and five for rostering in the source extract.[1][2] It does not appear as a universal state procurement requirement in this source. That distinction matters: a standard may be technically available, used by a state program, or required in a contract. Those are three different conditions.[9]

4. Rostering is the most useful operational lens

The state-level rostering use case is reported in 16 states.[1][2] The standard mix is:

• Ed-Fi: 8 states.[1][2]
• OneRoster: 5 states.[1][2]
• SIF/A4L: 3 states.[1][2]
• Other single statewide system: 3 states.[1][2]

These categories overlap because a state may use more than one standard or system.[1][2]

Rostering is where interoperability stops being a vocabulary argument and becomes a daily labor question: who gets access to which course, when, through which system, with what happens when the roster changes.[9]

5. “Not reported” is not “does not exist”

Twenty-nine states have all Project Unicorn cells in this extract marked Not Reported across the tracked standards/use cases. The map’s methods say the values are state-contact-verified and limited to live state-level production/deployment.[1]

That is valuable evidence, but it is not proof of absence. It means the public evidence layer is incomplete.[1][2] The dashboard therefore treats Not reported, Does not use, and Not yet verified as separate states.

The state matrix

The interactive dashboard contains all 50 state profiles. The high-signal groupings are:

States with reported Ed-Fi use

Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin.[1][2]

States with reported OneRoster use

Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin.[1][2]

States with an active SLDS

Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.[4]

States with an SLDS under construction

Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania.[4]

States publishing formal SLDS privacy policies

Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.[6]

States publishing recurring cross-agency reports

Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.[7]

The Kansas read

Kansas is the most useful state in this scan for separating what a national dashboard can prove from what a state agency is actually building.

ECS classifies Kansas as Not Found for an active SLDS in its 2024 establishment table, while the capacity table shows Kansas receiving federal SLDS and Workforce Data Quality Initiative grants and mapping its systems to CEDS across early learning, K-12, postsecondary, career/technical, and P20W fields.[4][5]

Project Unicorn marks Kansas as Not Reported across the standards/use-case cells in this extract.[1][2]

That evidence layer is incomplete, not the story. The Kansas State Department of Education is implementing KEDS (Kansas Education Data Systems), a modernized P-20W SLDS replacement for KIDS that ingests district submissions through a REST API aligned to the Ed-Fi data standard.[13][14] In other words, the state IS building on Ed-Fi. Project Unicorn has not yet verified that work, and ECS's 2024 establishment snapshot predates the public KEDS rollout.

For Wichita Public Schools, the practical question is not "Does Kansas have Ed-Fi?" The better questions are:

• What does KSDE require districts and vendors to exchange once KEDS is the canonical intake?
• What is the authoritative student identifier across enrollment, assessment, and transfer workflows?
• Does KEDS expose a documented exchange surface for districts or approved partners, or does every integration still need a custom conversation?
• Can a district vendor build once against a published contract, or does every integration become a custom conversation?
• What state-level SSO, roster, privacy, and data-retention rules constrain an enrollment platform such as Crimson?

How I learned this the hard way

Before Wichita, I was Executive Director of IST for the Nebraska Educational Service Units. Nebraska was one of the earliest statewide Ed-Fi rollouts, anchored on ADVISER (Advanced Data Views Informing Student Educational Response) — an Ed-Fi Alliance implementation customized by Double Line Partners, with the ESU Coordinating Council serving as the data-hosting and SSO integration partner.[15][16]

Omaha Public Schools, as ESU 19, was one of the participating districts. The work was less about installing software and more about the boring parts: getting every district SIS to speak the same Ed-Fi dialect, settling on a single authoritative student identifier, and pushing SSO through the ESU backbone so a teacher could move between schools without re-authenticating.

The lesson that has stayed with me since: the standard was the easy part. The state policy, the district contract language, and the local operational muscle to keep a published API contract honest were the hard parts. That is exactly what this dashboard is trying to keep separate.

Why this matters to a district CIO

Procurement

A vendor saying “we support Ed-Fi” is not enough.[11] The RFP needs to specify:

• standard and version;
• implementation profile;
• supported resources and use cases;
• import/export direction;
• certification status;
• conformance testing;
• change-management obligations;
• data portability on exit;
• service-level expectations for roster and identity updates.[11]

Product certification and state requirements are also different layers. 1EdTech maintains product certification and a directory for interoperable/privacy-oriented products, while Ed-Fi publishes guidance for requiring current certification in state RFPs. Project Unicorn separately describes certification as an interoperability assurance mechanism.[9][11][12]

Ed-Fi’s own state RFP guidance recommends requiring current certification and asking vendors for implementation details.[11]

Identity and SSO

A state data system does not automatically solve identity. Districts still need clear answers about:

• student vs. parent identity;
• account creation and recovery;
• persistent identifiers;
• role changes;
• duplicate records;
• transfers;
• lifecycle events;
• revocation and offboarding.

This is exactly where enrollment platforms become identity systems wearing a form-builder costume.

Data portability

OneRoster and Ed-Fi address different parts of the exchange problem. Neither one, by itself, guarantees that a district can leave a vendor, move records, preserve relationships, or reconstruct history without a professional services invoice and a prayer.

The next research pass should focus on actual state contract language, not only standards maps.

Privacy-preserving exchange

Governance and privacy policies matter, but they are not proof of privacy-preserving technical exchange. A stronger future signal would verify:

• role-based access;
• minimum necessary fields;
• tokenization or pseudonymization;
• disclosure review;
• audit logging;
• retention/deletion rules;
• secure APIs or brokered exchange;
• public documentation of data-sharing agreements.

What to watch next

1. State RFP language. This is where “interoperability” becomes enforceable rather than aspirational.
2. Transfer and enrollment workflows. Student mobility is the strongest practical test of whether data systems work.
3. Roster refresh latency. A standard that updates once a night behaves differently from a service that supports real-time changes.
4. Vendor exit rights. Portability is most visible when a contract ends.
5. Statewide identity architecture. SSO and identifiers are the missing bridge between data systems and actual user experience.
6. Privacy engineering. Watch for disclosure review, least-privilege access, and auditability, not just a policy PDF.
7. The gap between state and district. Project Unicorn explicitly excludes district-by-district adoption. A state can look modern while districts still run custom integrations.[1]

Strategic read

The next wave of K-12 interoperability will not be won by the state with the prettiest data warehouse. It will be won by the state that makes the boring path the easy path:

• one identity model;
• one set of exchange expectations;
• documented APIs;
• tested vendor conformance;
• portable records;
• privacy controls that are built into the exchange;
• and enough state support that a small district does not need a six-person integration team to change a rostering vendor.

The states with the strongest public evidence today are not necessarily the states with the best district experience. That is the next question worth investigating.

Methodology and limitations

• Project Unicorn data was extracted from its public Tableau workbook and retains the source’s state-level classifications. The map says it uses information reported by state education agency leaders, verified with state contacts, and limited to live production/deployment.[1][2]
• ECS data comes from its 2024 50-state SLDS comparison tables. ECS defines an active SLDS through public evidence of formal connections among at least two of four core domains; “under construction” is separate from “not found.”[3][4]
• A state’s SLDS status is not treated as proof of a statewide data warehouse, API, SSO, common identifier, or vendor-certification program.
• Not Found, Not Reported, and Not yet verified are deliberately separate labels.
• Headline totals cover the 50 states. The District of Columbia remains in the source context but is excluded from 50-state totals.
• This is a first release. The next research pass should verify the four currently open layers through state statutes, RFPs, SEA architecture documents, identity-platform documentation, and vendor-contract language.

Companion dashboard

The companion dashboard contains:

• 50 state tiles with filterable signals;
• a state profile panel;
• standard-by-use-case matrix;
• SLDS/governance/privacy coverage views;
• a visible research-gap layer for SSO, identifiers, APIs, and certification;
• source links and method notes.

Sources

[1] https://www.projectunicorn.org/state-data-standards-map — Project Unicorn State Data Standards Map [2] https://public.tableau.com/workbooks/StateDataStandardsMap.twb?showVizHome=no — Project Unicorn Tableau workbook [3] https://www.ecs.org/50-state-comparison-statewide-longitudinal-data-systems-2024 — ECS 50-State SLDS Comparison 2024 [4] https://reports.ecs.org/comparisons/statewide-longitudinal-data-systems-2024-01 — ECS SLDS Establishment table [5] https://reports.ecs.org/comparisons/statewide-longitudinal-data-systems-2024-03 — ECS SLDS Capacity table [6] https://reports.ecs.org/comparisons/statewide-longitudinal-data-systems-2024-04 — ECS SLDS Governance table [7] https://reports.ecs.org/comparisons/statewide-longitudinal-data-systems-2024-05 — ECS SLDS Use table [8] https://www.ecs.org/50-state-comparison-state-data-dictionaries-and-manuals — ECS State Data Dictionaries and Manuals [9] https://www.1edtech.org/standards/oneroster — 1EdTech OneRoster Standard [10] https://www.ed-fi.org — Ed-Fi Alliance [11] https://docs.ed-fi.org/getting-started/sea-playbook/project-planning/requiring-ed-fi-certification-in-state-rfps — Ed-Fi Certification in State RFPs [12] https://www.projectunicorn.org/interoperability-certification-more-info — Project Unicorn Interoperability Certification [13] https://kedx.ksde.gov/keds — Kansas Education Data Systems (KEDS), Kansas State Department of Education [14] https://kedx.ksde.gov/ — Kansas Education Data Exchange (KED-X), Kansas State Department of Education [15] https://www.education.ne.gov/dataservices/adviser-resources/ — ADVISER Resources, Nebraska Department of Education [16] https://nitc.nebraska.gov/advisory-groups/technical-panel/meetings/docs/2016/2016-08-09-minutes.pdf — NITC Technical Panel minutes, Nebraska Department of Education (ADVISER partners and timeline)