READ FIRST TIME 03/02/09.   

     AN ACT Relating to comprehensive education data; amending RCW 43.41.400; adding new sections to chapter 43.41 RCW; and creating a new section.

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

Sec. 1   RCW 43.41.400 and 2007 c 401 s 3 are each amended to read as follows:
     (1) An education data center shall be established in the office of financial management. The education data center shall jointly, with the legislative ((education [evaluation])) evaluation and accountability program committee, conduct collaborative analyses of early learning, K-12, and higher education programs and education issues across the P-20 system, which includes the department of early learning, the superintendent of public instruction, the professional educator standards board, the state board of education, the state board for community and technical colleges, the workforce training and education coordinating board, the higher education coordinating board, public and private nonprofit four-year institutions of higher education, and the employment security department. The education data center shall conduct collaborative analyses under this section with the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee and provide data electronically to the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee, to the extent permitted by state and federal confidentiality requirements. The education data center shall be considered an authorized representative of the state educational agencies in this section under applicable federal and state statutes for purposes of accessing and compiling student record data for research purposes.
     (2) The education data center shall:
     (a) In consultation with the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee and the agencies and organizations participating in the education data center, identify the critical research and policy questions that are intended to be addressed by the education data center and the data needed to address the questions;
     (b) Coordinate with other state education agencies to compile and analyze education data, including data on student demographics that is disaggregated by distinct ethnic categories within racial subgroups, and complete P-20 research projects;
     (((b))) (c) Collaborate with the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee and the education and fiscal committees of the legislature in identifying the data to be compiled and analyzed to ensure that legislative interests are served;
     (((c))) (d) Annually provide to the K-12 data governance group a list of data elements and data quality improvements that are necessary to answer the research and policy questions identified by the education data center and have been identified by the legislative committees in (c) of this subsection. Within three months of receiving the list, the K-12 data governance group shall develop and transmit to the education data center a feasibility analysis of obtaining or improving the data, including the steps required, estimated time frame, and the financial and other resources that would be required. Based on the analysis, the education data center shall submit, if necessary, a recommendation to the legislature regarding any statutory changes or resources that would be needed to collect or improve the data;
     (e) Monitor and evaluate the education data collection systems of the organizations and agencies represented in the education data center ensuring that data systems are flexible, able to adapt to evolving needs for information, and to the extent feasible and necessary, include data that are needed to conduct the analyses and provide answers to the research and policy questions identified in (a) of this subsection;
     (f) Track enrollment and outcomes through the public centralized higher education enrollment system;
     (((d))) (g) Assist other state educational agencies' collaborative efforts to develop a long-range enrollment plan for higher education including estimates to meet demographic and workforce needs; ((and
     (e))) (h) Provide research that focuses on student transitions within and among the early learning, K-12, and higher education sectors in the P-20 system; and
     (i) Make recommendations to the legislature as necessary to help ensure the goals and objectives of this section and sections 2 and 3 of this act are met.
     (3) The department of early learning, superintendent of public instruction, professional educator standards board, state board of education, state board for community and technical colleges, workforce training and education coordinating board, higher education coordinating board, public four-year institutions of higher education, and employment security department shall work with the education data center to develop data-sharing and research agreements, consistent with applicable security and confidentiality requirements, to facilitate the work of the center. Private, nonprofit institutions of higher education that provide programs of education beyond the high school level leading at least to the baccalaureate degree and are accredited by the Northwest association of schools and colleges or their peer accreditation bodies may also develop data-sharing and research agreements with the education data center, consistent with applicable security and confidentiality requirements. The education data center shall make data from collaborative analyses available to the education agencies and institutions that contribute data to the education data center to the extent allowed by federal and state security and confidentiality requirements applicable to the data of each contributing agency or institution.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 2   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 K- 12 education data improvement system for financial, student, and educator data. The objective of the system is to monitor student progress, have information on the quality of the educator workforce, 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 K-12 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 intent that the data system specifically service reporting requirements for teachers, parents, superintendents, school boards, the legislature, the office of the superintendent of public instruction, and the public.
     (3) It is the legislature's intent that the K-12 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, class size, mobility of class population, socioeconomic data of class, number of languages and which languages are spoken by students, general resources available for curriculum and other classroom needs, and number and type 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 standard coding of course content;
     (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;
     (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:
     (i) To support the accuracy and auditing of financial data; and
     (ii) Using the prototypical school model for school district financial accounting reporting;
     (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 updated at least quarterly, and made available to the public by the state.
     (4) 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 K-12 education data improvement system under this section.
     (5) It is the legislature's intent that the K-12 education data improvement system be developed to provide the capability to make reports as required under section 3 of this act available.
     (6) It is the legislature's intent that school districts collect and report new data elements to satisfy the requirements of RCW 43.41.400, this section, and section 3 of this act, only to the extent funds are available for this purpose.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 3   A new section is added to chapter 43.41 RCW to read as follows:
     (1) A K-12 data governance group shall be established within the educational data center to assist in the design and implementation of a K-12 education data improvement system for financial, student, and educator data. It is the intent that the data system reporting specifically serve requirements for teachers, parents, superintendents, school boards, the office of the superintendent of public instruction, the legislature, and the public.
     (2) The K-12 data governance group shall include representatives of the education data center, the office of the superintendent of public instruction, the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee, the professional educator standards board, the state board of education, and school district staff, including information technology staff. Additional entities with expertise in education data may be included in the K-12 data governance group.
     (3) The K-12 data governance group shall:
     (a) Identify the critical research and policy questions that need to be addressed by the K-12 education data improvement system;
     (b) Identify reports and other information that should be made available on the internet in addition to the reports identified in subsection (5) of this section;
     (c) 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 K-12 education data improvement system as described under section 2 of this act;
     (d) 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;
     (e) 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
     (f) 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. Strong consideration must be made to the current practice and cost of migration to new requirements. 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) Defining and maintaining standards for privacy and confidentiality;
     (ii) Setting data collection priorities;
     (iii) Defining and updating a standard data dictionary;
     (iv) Ensuring data compliance with the data dictionary;
     (v) Ensuring data accuracy; and
     (vi) Establishing minimum standards for school, student, financial, and teacher data systems. Data elements may be specified "to the extent feasible" or "to the extent available" to collect more and better data sets from districts with more flexible software. Nothing in RCW 43.41.400, this section, or section 2 of this act should be construed to require that a data dictionary or reporting should be hobbled to the lowest common set. The work of the K-12 data governance group must specify which data are desirable. Districts that can meet these requirements shall report the desirable data. Funding from the legislature must establish which subset data are absolutely required.
     (4)(a) The K-12 data governance group shall provide updates on its work as requested by the education data center and the legislative evaluation and accountability program committee.
     (b) The work of the K-12 data governance group shall be periodically reviewed and monitored by the educational data center and 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 the most recent data:
     (a) The percentage of data compliance and data accuracy by school district;
     (b) The magnitude of spending per student, by student estimated by the following algorithm and reported as the detailed summation of the following components:
     (i) An approximate, prorated fraction of each teacher or human resource element that directly serves the student. Each human resource element must be listed or accessible through online tunneling in the report;
     (ii) An approximate, prorated fraction of classroom or building costs used by the student;
     (iii) An approximate, prorated fraction of transportation costs used by the student; and
     (iv) An approximate, prorated fraction of all other resources within the district that support any component of which makes up more than five percent;
     (c) The cost of K-12 basic education, per student, by student, by school district, estimated by the algorithm in (b) of this subsection, and reported in the same manner as required in (b) of this subsection;
     (d) The cost of K-12 special education services per student, by student receiving those services, by school district, estimated by the algorithm in (b) of this subsection, and reported in the same manner as required in (b) of this subsection;
     (e) Improvement on the statewide assessments computed as both a percentage change and absolute change on a scale score metric 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;
     (f) Number of K-12 students per classroom teacher on a per teacher basis;
     (g) Number of K-12 classroom teachers per student on a per student basis;
     (h) Percentage of a classroom teacher per student on a per student basis; and
     (i) The cost of K-12 education per student by school district sorted by federal, state, and local dollars.
     (6) The superintendent of public instruction shall submit a preliminary report to the legislature by November 15, 2009, including the analyses by the K-12 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, RCW 43.41.400, and section 2 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.
     (8) Reports shall contain data to the extent it is available. All reports must include documentation of which data are not available or are estimated. Reports must not be suppressed because of poor data accuracy or completeness. Reports may be accompanied with documentation to inform the reader of why some data are missing or inaccurate or estimated.

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 4   The education data center and the superintendent of public instruction shall take all actions necessary to secure federal funds to implement this act.