BILL REQ. #:  S-1957.1 

READ FIRST TIME 02/19/09.   

     AN ACT Relating to comprehensive education data; adding new sections to chapter 43.41 RCW; and creating a new section.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 1   A new section is added to chapter 43.41 RCW to read as follows:
     (1) It is the legislature's intent to establish a comprehensive education data improvement system for financial, student, and educator data. The objective of the system is to monitor student progress, assure educator quality, monitor and analyze the costs of programs, provide for financial integrity and accountability, and have the capability to link across these various data components by student, by class, by teacher, by school, by district, and statewide. Education data systems must be flexible and able to adapt to evolving needs for information, but there must be an objective and orderly data governance process for determining when changes are needed and how to implement them. It is the further intent of the legislature to provide independent review and evaluation of a comprehensive education data improvement system by assigning the review and monitoring responsibilities to the education data center and the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee.
     (2) It is the legislature's intent that the education data improvement system used by school districts and the state include but not be limited to the following information and functionality:
     (a) Comprehensive educator information, including grade level and courses taught, building or location, program, job assignment, years of experience, the institution of higher education from which the educator obtained his or her degree, compensation, actual class size, mobility of class population, socioeconomic data of class, number of languages spoken by students, general resources available for curriculum and other classroom needs, and number of instructional support staff in the building;
     (b) The capacity to link educator assignment information with educator certification information such as certification number, type of certification, route to certification, certification program, and certification assessment or evaluation scores;
     (c) Common coding of secondary courses and major areas of study at the elementary level or coding linking course content to essential academic learning requirements;
     (d) Robust student information, including but not limited to student characteristics, course and program enrollment, performance on statewide and district summative and formative assessments to the extent district assessments are used, and performance on college readiness tests;
     (e) A subset of student information elements to serve as a dropout early warning system;
     (f) The capacity to link educator information with student information;
     (g) A common, standardized structure for reporting the costs of programs at the school and district level with a focus on the cost of services delivered to students rather than accounting for expenditure inputs;
     (h) Separate accounting of state, federal, and local revenues and costs;
     (i) Information linking state funding formulas to school district budgeting and accounting, including procedures for assuring that financial data is accurate and auditable;
     (j) The capacity to link program cost information with student performance information to gauge the cost-effectiveness of programs;
     (k) Information that is centrally accessible and updated regularly; and
     (l) An anonymous, nonidentifiable replicated copy of data that is publicly accessible.
     (3) It is the legislature's goal that all school districts have the capability to collect state-identified common data and export it in a standard format to support a statewide education data improvement system under this section.
     (4) It is the legislature's intent that the education data improvement system be developed to provide the capability to make reports as required under section 2 of this act available.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 2   A new section is added to chapter 43.41 RCW to read as follows:
     (1) A data governance group shall be established within the educational data center to assist in the design and implementation of an education data improvement system for financial, student, and educator data.
     (2) The data governance group shall include representatives of the office of financial management, the office of the superintendent of public instruction, the state auditor's office, the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee, the joint legislative audit and review committee, the professional educator standards board, the state board of education, and school district staff. Additional stakeholders may include representatives of the Washington school information processing cooperative, educational service districts, the Washington association of school business officers, the Washington education association, the Washington association of school administrators, the Washington state school directors' association, school district information technology staff, and other interested stakeholders with expertise in education data.
     (3) The data governance group shall:
     (a) Create a comprehensive needs requirement document detailing the specific information and technical capacity needed by school districts and the state to meet the legislature's expectations for a comprehensive education data improvement system as described under section 1 of this act;
     (b) Conduct a gap analysis of current and planned information compared to the needs requirement document, including an analysis of the strengths and limitations of an education data system and programs currently used by school districts and the state, and specifically the gap analysis must look at the extent to which the existing data can be transformed into canonical form and where existing software can be used to meet the needs requirement document;
     (c) Focus on financial and cost data necessary to support the new K-12 financial models and funding formulas, including any necessary changes to school district budgeting and accounting, and on assuring the capacity to link data across financial, student, and educator systems; and
     (d) Define the operating rules and governance structure for K-12 data collections, ensuring that data systems are flexible and able to adapt to evolving needs for information, within an objective and orderly data governance process for determining when changes are needed and how to implement them. The operating rules should delineate the coordination, delegation, and escalation authority for data collection issues, business rules, and performance goals for each K-12 data collection system, including:
     (i) Setting data collection priorities;
     (ii) Defining and updating a standard data dictionary;
     (iii) Ensuring data compliance with the data dictionary;
     (iv) Ensuring data accuracy; and
     (v) Establishing minimum standards for school, student, financial, and teacher data systems.
     (4) The work of the data governance group shall be periodically reviewed by the educational data center and monitored by the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee. The governance group shall provide updates on its work as requested by the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee.
     (5) To the extent data is available, the office of the superintendent of public instruction shall make the following minimum reports available on the internet. The reports must either be run on demand against current data, or, if a static report, must have been run against data no older than three months old:
     (a) The percentage of data compliance and data accuracy by school district;
     (b) The cost of K-12 basic education per student by school district;
     (c) The cost of K-12 special education services per student receiving those services by school district;
     (d) Aggregate growth on the statewide assessments as both an absolute and a percentage of scale score change by district, by school, and by teacher that can also be filtered by a student's length of full-time enrollment within the school district;
     (e) Number of K-12 students per classroom teacher on a per teacher basis;
     (f) Number of K-12 classroom teachers per student on a per student basis;
     (g) Percentage of a classroom teacher per student on a per student basis; and
     (h) The cost of K-12 education per student by school district sorted by federal, state, and local dollars.
     (6) The educational data center shall submit a preliminary report to the legislature by November 15, 2009, including the analyses by the data governance group under subsection (3) of this section and preliminary options for addressing identified gaps. A final report, including a proposed phase-in plan and preliminary cost estimates for implementation of a comprehensive data improvement system for financial, student, and educator data shall be submitted to the legislature by September 1, 2010.
     (7) All reports and data referenced in this section and section 1 of this act shall be made available in a manner consistent with the technical requirements of the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee and the education data center so that selected data can be provided to the legislature, governor, school districts, and the public.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 3   The office of financial management shall take all actions necessary to secure federal funds to implement this act.