2026-27 Lastinger Listening Tour

The Lastinger Center 2026-27 Listening Tour creates a structured opportunity to surface real-world needs, challenges, and expectations around educational information and data systems, needs, and use.

Florida’s Education Data Systems

Florida’s educational ecosystem depends on complex information and data lifecycles that inform individual student support, classroom instruction, school improvement strategies, and instructional and policy decision-making statewide.

Carried out in partnership with Helios Education Foundation, the 2026-27 Lastinger Listening Tour will gather perspectives from a wide variety of stakeholders across Florida to better understand the state’s student information and reporting systems, and guide future programs and policies around what students need to succeed.

As part of the tour, we want to better understand how education data and information is used today, and we are interested in your honest experience and perspective. Click below to fill out the survey and make your voice heard!

Fill Out the Listening Tour Survey

A lastinger listening tour guest lecturer talking about Florida education systems.

Data & the Human Experience

Understanding complex systems goes beyond data collection and analysis; it requires insight into the human experiences that give context and meaning to the numbers.

To achieve this, the tour will:

Connect research capacity to practical decision-making: ensuring findings translate into clear, evidence-based actions for improvement.
Identify opportunities to streamline reporting processes: allowing more time to act on data-driven insights.
Develop responsible data access models: balancing the security of sensitive information with the need for timely, actionable analysis.
Elevate family perspectives: on how data should be communicated and used to support their children’s education.

The Power of Data Systems

Support informed decision-making

Drive meaningful improvement

Support timely analysis and research

Shape the trajectory for students, schools, districts and the state

Understanding Needs, Uses and Access

The 2026-27 Lastinger Listening Tour is a statewide research initiative designed to gather a comprehensive evidence base to identify information and data needs, uses, barriers to access and opportunities in order to understand the system and how it can be enhanced.

Needs

Identify and document data priorities.
Evaluate how data can be used more effectively.
Determine data requirements to support instructional improvement, operational decision making, and policy development.

Uses

Identify how data is used, analyzed, and applied.
Explore data access models that enable responsible, secure access to data.
Map technical workflows to understand delays or risks for data quality, security, or privacy.

Barriers to Access

Identify policies, processes, and governance challenges that limit researchers’ and leaders’ access to data sets.
Consult with experts to define governance structures that balance security and privacy with the need for access.

Opportunities

Identify how data is used, analyzed, and applied.
Explore data access models that enable responsible, secure access to data.
Map technical workflows to understand delays or risks for data quality, security, or privacy.

Listening to Voices Across the State

We couple our rigorous research with listening directly to communities who generate, use, and are impacted by educational data and reporting. By gathering critical insights from key stakeholders, we will start to understand how to bridge the gap between access to information, systems and decision-making.

District and School Leaders

• Surface opportunities to align data availability with decision making.
• Identify information that enables timely and effective supports.

Policymakers and Funders

• Provide input on policy and funding conditions that shape data access.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen infrastructure for rapid, high-quality research.

Data, Assessment, IT, & Research Staff

• Share insight into technical and operational realities of data systems.
• Share considerations around privacy, security, quality, and responsible governance.

Teachers, Instructional Coaches, and Counselors

• Identify how data can be made more accessible and relevant to the classroom.
• Highlight information needed to inform instruction, monitor progress, and adjust teaching in real time.

Families

• Offer perspectives on how data about their children is communicated, understood, and used.
• Identify expectations for transparency and trust.

Higher Education Leaders

• Provide critical perspectives on how data can support student pathways across K–12, postsecondary education, and other systems.

Educational Researchers & Research Partners

• Contribute research expertise, analytic methods, learning analytics knowledge, evaluation capacity, and partnership models.

Community-Based Service Providers

• Highlight opportunities to align education data with broader supports.
• Identify what information is needed to coordinate services and strengthen partnerships.

A map of Florida with pins showing the Data Listening Tour's future site visit locations.

From the Panhandle to the Keys

The 2026-27 Lastinger Listening Tour will visit 10 different regions across Florida, ensuring that perspectives on access to information and research needs from every corner of the state are heard and incorporated into future strategies.

Interested in participating or supporting the 2026-27 Lastinger Listening Tour? Let us know!

Fill Out the 2026-27 Listening Tour Interest Form

Listening Tour Schedule

Week of September 7 – Northeast Florida
Week of September 14 – Panhandle/PAEC
Week of September 21 – Tampa Bay
Week of September 28 – Southwest Florida
Week of October 5 – Capitol/Gateway

Week of October 12 – North Central Florida
Week of October 19 – Treasure Coast/Space Coast
Week of October 26 – Central Florida
Week of November 2 – Sarasota/Heartland
Week of November 9 – Southeast Florida