South Carolina's data journey began with a narrow, practical problem: student rostering. Districts, especially smaller ones, were burning time and resources manually managing systems and formatting data just to get students enrolled in the right classes and tools. Rather than tackling everything at once, state leaders built a shared solution to fix rostering statewide, cutting duplication and improving accuracy for all districts.
That early win became the foundation for something bigger: a statewide data system built on the Ed-Fi Data Standard, now overseen by a joint team of state staff and district leaders. Before this effort, South Carolina's data infrastructure was fragmented, with state reports sometimes relying on data up to two years old and smaller districts lacking the capacity to keep pace.
The state's goals were to ease technical burdens on districts, build lasting trust through district-led governance, speed up access to actionable data, and encourage collaboration across state lines using open-source tools. To build trust, South Carolina created a District Data Governance team of local leaders who help steer the system's development. The state also joined five neighboring states — North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Delaware — in the Ed-Tech Collaboratory, jointly building open-source tools that any member state can adopt.
The results have been substantial: data changes made at the local level now propagate statewide within 24 hours, new features are added based on direct district feedback, and other states have begun adopting the open-source tools built in partnership with Education Analytics. The system now supports use cases spanning early childhood data, IEP tracking, college and career readiness, historical test data, teacher-prep evaluation, and real-time alerts like course-drop notifications reaching counselors within a day.
Key lessons included listening to districts before building, making adoption easy for vendors through the Ed-Fi standard, keeping governance independent of state agency turnover, and sharing costs through partnerships. Overall, the case study frames South Carolina's success as proof that starting small with a real, tangible problem — rather than attempting a sweeping overhaul — can build the trust and momentum needed for lasting statewide transformation.
This Story from the Field is a supplement to the 2026 Project Unicorn State of the Sector Report which analyzes K-12 school system capabilities and infrastructure for leveraging education data. Read the full report.
