The Measuring and Evaluating Trends for Reliability, Integrity, and Continued Success (METRICS) Act (H.R. 5024 and S. 3204) seeks to address three needs through two competitive grant programs:

• Expanding the ability of state longitudinal data systems to link across the P–20 education pipeline and across state agencies.
• Ensuring districts and schools develop and implement processes and tools necessary to use both the data in the statewide data system and complement it with local information that supports daily instruction and safeguards student privacy.
• Building the capacity of all stakeholders, particularly educators, to use data for effective decisionmaking.

Competitive grants to states: The bill authorizes $65 million in competitive grants to states to improve the use of their statewide data systems. Rather than use grant funding to simply build data systems, grantees will use funds to link data throughout the education pipeline and across state agencies and improve access to and use of statewide data.

Competitive grants to districts: The bill authorizes $65 million for a new competitive program to low-income local education agencies (or consortia of local education agencies) with low-performing schools to help build the capacity to use data to improve student outcomes. Grantees would use funds to put in place a comprehensive plan to provide stakeholders with access to student education data, regularly analyze and share data, and improve school leaders’ and educators’ use of data. Grantees could also use funds to develop or improve upon local data systems and content management, instructional, and assessment tools. These activities would require coordination with state agency efforts and respect student privacy.

About the METRICS Act:

To learn more about the Measuring and Evaluating Trends for Reliability, Integrity, and Continued Success (METRICS) Act, read the bill summary.

From the sponsors of the METRICS Act:

Representative Holt’s press release.