BILL REQ. #:  S-1262.1 

Read first time 02/09/09.   Referred to Committee on Early Learning & K-12 Education.

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

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 comprehensive education data improvement systems for financial, student, and educator data. The objective of the systems 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 process for determining when changes are needed and how to implement them.
     (2) It is the legislature's intent that the education data improvement systems used by school districts and the state include but not be limited to the following information and functionality:
     (a) Comprehensive educator assignment information, including grade level and courses taught, building or location, program, job assignment, years of experience, and compensation;
     (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;
     (d) Complete 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 financial accountability 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) A deidentified replicated copy of data that is publicly accessible.
     (3) It is the legislature's goal that all school districts use a common data schema 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 educational data center with the capabilities to make the following minimum reports available:
     (a) The percentage of data compliance and data integrity by district;
     (b) The average basic education spending per student by district;
     (c) The average special education spending per student for special education services by district;
     (d) Aggregate growth on the Washington assessment of student learning as a percentage and raw scalar change by district, by school, and by teacher that can also be filtered by a student's length of full-time annual enrollment within the school district;
     (e) Number of students per teacher on a per teacher basis;
     (f) Number of teachers per student on a per student basis; and
     (g) Percentage of a teacher per student on a per student basis.

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 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, the Washington state 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 comprehensive education data improvement systems 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 education data systems and programs currently used by school districts and the state, and specifically looking 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 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) Develop a proposal for a data governance structure that is submitted to the educational data center for implementation. The educational data center is responsible for defining and updating a standard data schema, ensuring data compliance with the schema, ensuring data integrity, setting data collection priorities, establishing minimum mandatory standards for school data systems, and overseeing implementation of the comprehensive education data improvement systems.
     (4) The work of the data governance group shall be overseen by the educational data center and monitored by the legislative evaluation and accountability program. The governance group shall provide updates on its work as requested by the legislative evaluation and accountability program.
     (5) To the extent data is available, the educational data center 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 integrity by district;
     (b) The average basic education spending per student by district;
     (c) The average special education spending per student for special education services by district;
     (d) Aggregate growth on the Washington assessment of student learning as a percentage and raw scalar change by district, by school, and by teacher that can also be filtered by a student's length of full-time annual enrollment within the school district;
     (e) Number of students per teacher on a per teacher basis;
     (f) Number of teachers per student on a per student basis; and
     (g) Percentage of a teacher per student on a per student basis.
     (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 comprehensive data accountability systems for financial, student, and educator data shall be submitted to the legislature by September 1, 2010.