Georgia and South Carolina are closer to being able to track all students as they move from school to school, and a regional tracking system could follow.

When students transfer to a new school in another school system, there is a delay between their arrival and that of their records. The delay causes important information, such as the special education services a child might need, to lag behind, which in turn causes students to fall behind in class.

This is particularly an issue for the Augusta area because it's on the line between two states, is home to a large military installation and generally has a mobile student population.

But both Georgia and South Carolina have invested in the infrastructure necessary to support a student information system, which assigns a unique identification number to each student, reducing the lag time resulting from transfers anywhere in state.

"When a student shows up to register at another school, that information is immediately available," Georgia Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza said.

Last week, the state department announced an $8.9 million federal grant that, among other things, will help with its student information system, one that will track students with a unique identification number from pre-school through college.

The grant will also enable Georgia to work with other states.

South Carolina's system is almost complete and is tracking about 99 percent of students, said Gary West, the state Department of Education's chief information officer and director of data management and analysis.

South Carolina and Georgia are part of a six-state consortium formed recently to draw stimulus money, he said. It's still quite early, but there has been talk of establishing a regional numbering system, Mr. West said.

Tracking systems have many benefits, Mr. Cardoza said. The system will allow states to more accurately calculate graduation rates. Often school systems don't know what happened with students who leave and automatically list them as transfers when they have actually dropped out.

Reach Greg Gelpi at (706) 828-3851 or greg.gelpi@augustachronicle.com.