Dive Brief:

• The Arizona Department of Education is seeking $16.5 million this year to further modernize the state's education data and coding system.
• Officials use the system to track information ranging from standardized-test scores to students in the federal school lunch program, and the state's superintendent of public instruction, John Huppenthal, says the current system's unnecessary costs and bureaucracy are a burden to schools.
• In 2014, the department hopes to give teachers easier access to student data, particularly when it comes to new transfers and those with learning disabilities or special-education needs.

Dive Insight:

According to Huppenthal, bringing data "from School A to School B" with a transferring student sometimes takes months and results in millions of dollars being spent on giving those students diagnostic tests already taken at a previous school. The superintendent envisions a system where teachers and principals can see student data instantly on a dashboard, and a system along those lines is being tested in several schools this year with a tentative rollout coming by the end of next year.