Treat the National Center for Education Statistics’ datasets and dashboards as critical public infrastructure: mandate standardized machine‑readable APIs, routine provenance and audit trails, and a federal program to fund local data‑capacity so states and researchers can run reproducible, timely policy analysis (e.g., school finance, achievement gaps, program evaluation). This would also require clear access tiers and privacy safeguards to enable rapid research while protecting students.
— Making education statistics an explicitly governed public‑infrastructure asset would raise the quality and speed of evidence used in school funding, accountability, and intervention decisions nationwide.
Tyler Cowen
2026.01.13
78% relevant
Denning et al. use administrative and longitudinal education data to estimate causal effects of grade inflation; that mirrors the existing idea that high‑quality, standardized education data are public‑infrastructure essential for diagnosing policy (here, how grading practices ripple into graduation, enrollment, and earnings).
2026.01.04
92% relevant
This IES blog highlights OECD EAG 2023 tables and dashboards as reference points; that aligns directly with the existing idea that education statistics should be treated as public infrastructure—standardized, auditable data used to guide policy (e.g., ECEC gaps, postsecondary attainment, VET structure). The article’s emphasis on dashboards and cross‑country comparators exemplifies the data‑infrastructure use case.
2026.01.04
81% relevant
Publishing PISA 2022 country and subgroup results demonstrates why standardized, machine‑readable, comparable educational datasets are public‑infrastructure: policymakers, researchers, and districts rely on these releases to audit system performance and design policy—exactly the governance concern in the matched idea.
2026.01.04
100% relevant
NCES’s site lists core programs (Common Core of Data, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, NAEP, EDGE dashboards, School Pulse Panel) that already aggregate national/state/local education measures and could be formalized into an API‑first, audit‑ready public platform.