Relevant Information to Strengthen Education (RISE)

What is RISE?

Relevant Information to Strengthen Education (RISE) was create to help the CDE customers better understand and relate to the objectives of the Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant. CDE received federal funding to build a Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS), and is now nearing the end of the development process.

SLDS’s overall goal is to enable the secure and efficient sharing of educational data, from preschool to K12 to higher education/career and technical education to workforce development agencies, for the purposes of educational research and policy-making. CDE’s overall initiative, called RISE (Relevant Information to Support Education), includes many programmatic strategic goals that depend on the ability to connect data across agencies and/or programs.

The Colorado Department of Education (CDE) received a 2019 federal grant to improve Colorado’s Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS).  This grant award follows two previous SLDS grants in 2007 and 2009 building on the RISE infrastructure.  The CDE applied for the grant in Sept 2019 and it was awarded in Feb 2020. In addition, the CDE applied for and received supplementation funding in the amount of $360,000 in September 2020.  The additional opportunity was offered due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on state education operations.  Outcomes from these funds must be tied to COVID-19.

There are three SLDS Grant strategic objectives under the RISE program: Capture (Gather), Link (Connect) and Provide. Each strategic objective was accomplished through a series of projects.  

Learn more about the strategic objectives:

• Gather
• Connect
• Provide

The CDE has created the following fact sheet on the FY19 SLDS Grant and the proposed outcomes.