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General Assembly Raised Bill No. 851
January Session, 2019
LCO No. 4041
Referred to Committee on EDUCATION
Introduced by:
(ED)
AN ACT PROHIBITING THE DISAGGREGATION OF ST UDENT DATA
BY ETHNIC SUBGROUPS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL INFORMATION
SYSTEM.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General
Assembly convened:
Section 1. Section 10-10a of the general statutes is repealed and the 1
following is substituted in lieu thereof (Effective July 1, 2019): 2
(a) As used in this section: 3
(1) "Teacher" means any certified professional employee below the 4
rank of superintendent employed by a board of education for at least 5
ninety days in a position requiring a certificate issued by the State 6
Board of Education; 7
(2) "Teacher preparation program" means a program designed to 8
qualify an individual for professional certification as an educator 9
provided by institutions of higher education or other providers 10
approved by the Department of Education, including, but not limited 11
to, an alternate route to certification program. 12 Raised Bill No. 851
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(b) The Department of Education shall develop and implement a 13
state-wide public school information system. The system shall be 14
designed for the purpose of establishing a standardized electronic data 15
collection and reporting protocol that will facilitate compliance with 16
state and federal reporting requirements, improve school-to-school 17
and district-to-district information exchanges, and maintain the 18
confidentiality of individual student and staff data. The initial design 19
shall focus on student information, provided the system shall be 20
created to allow for future compatibility with financial, facility and 21
staff data. The system shall provide for the tracking of the performance 22
of individual students on each of the state-wide mastery examinations 23
under section 10-14n in order to allow the department to compare the 24
progress of the same cohort of students who take each examination 25
and to better analyze school performance. The department shall assign 26
a unique student identifier to each student prior to tracking the 27
performance of a student in the public school information system. 28
(c) The state-wide public school information system shall: 29
(1) Track and report data relating to student, teacher and school and 30
district performance growth and make such information available to 31
local and regional boards of education for use in evaluating 32
educational performance and growth of teachers and students enrolled 33
in public schools in the state. Such information shall be collected or 34
calculated based on information received from local and regional 35
boards of education and other relevant sources. Such information shall 36
include, but not be limited to: 37
(A) In addition to performance on state-wide mastery examinations 38
pursuant to subsection (b) of this section, data relating to students shall 39
include, but not be limited to, (i) the primary language spoken at the 40
home of a student, (ii) student transcripts, (iii) student attendance and 41
student mobility, (iv) reliable, valid assessments of a student's 42
readiness to enter public school at the kindergarten level, and (v) data 43
collected, if any, from the preschool experience survey, described in 44
section 10-515. Such data relating to students shall not be 45 Raised Bill No. 851
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disaggregated by ethnic subgroups unless such disaggregated student 46
data is (I) required under federal law, or (II) collected uniformly for all 47
ethnic subgroups among the entire student population in the state; 48
(B) Data relating to teachers shall include, but not be limited to, (i) 49
teacher credentials, such as master's degrees, teacher preparation 50
programs completed and certification levels and endorsement areas, 51
(ii) teacher assessments, such as whether a teacher is deemed highly 52
qualified pursuant to the No Child Left Behind Act, P.L. 107-110, or 53
deemed to meet such other designations as may be established by 54
federal law or regulations for the purposes of tracking the equitable 55
distribution of instructional staff, (iii) the presence of substitute 56
teachers in a teacher's classroom, (iv) class size, (v) numbers relating to 57
absenteeism in a teacher's classroom, and (vi) the presence of a 58
teacher's aide. The department shall assign a unique teacher identifier 59
to each teacher prior to collecting such data in the public school 60
information system; 61
(C) Data relating to schools and districts shall include, but not be 62
limited to, (i) school population, (ii) annual student graduation rates, 63
(iii) annual teacher retention rates, (iv) school disciplinary records, 64
such as data relating to suspensions, expulsions and other disciplinary 65
actions, (v) the percentage of students whose primary language is not 66
English, (vi) the number of and professional credentials of support 67
personnel, (vii) information relating to instructional technology, such 68
as access to computers, and (viii) disaggregated measures of school-69
based arrests pursuant to section 10-233n. 70
(2) Collect data relating to student enrollment in and graduation 71
from institutions of higher education for any student who had been 72
assigned a unique student identifier pursuant to subsection (b) of this 73
section, provided such data is available. 74
(3) Develop means for access to and data sharing with the data 75
systems of public institutions of higher education in the state. 76
(d) On or before July 1, 2011, and each year thereafter until July 1, 77 Raised Bill No. 851
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2013, the Commissioner of Education shall report, in accordance with 78
the provisions of section 11-4a, to the joint standing committee of the 79
General Assembly having cognizance of matters relating to education 80
on the progress of the department's efforts to expand the state-wide 81
public school information system pursuant to subsection (c) of this 82
section. The report shall include a full statement of those data elements 83
that are currently included in the system and those data elements that 84
will be added on or before July 1, 2013. 85
(e) The system database of student information shall not be 86
considered a public record for the purposes of section 1-210. Nothing 87
in this section shall be construed to limit the ability of a full-time 88
permanent employee of a nonprofit organization that is exempt from 89
taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, 90
or any subsequent corresponding internal revenue code of the United 91
States, as from time to time amended, and that is organized and 92
operated for educational purposes, to obtain information in accordance 93
with the provisions of subsection (h) of this section. 94
(f) All school districts shall participate in the system, and report all 95
necessary information required by this section, provided the 96
department provides for technical assistance and training of school 97
staff in the use of the system. 98
(g) Local and regional boards of education and preschool programs 99
which receive state or federal funding shall participate, in a manner 100
prescribed by the Commissioner of Education, in the state-wide public 101
school information system described in subsection (b) of this section. 102
Participation for purposes of this subsection shall include, but not be 103
limited to, reporting on (1) student experiences in preschool by 104
program type and by numbers of months in each such program, and 105
(2) the readiness of students entering kindergarten and student 106
progress in kindergarten. Such reporting shall be done by October 1, 107
2007, and annually thereafter. 108
(h) On and after August 1, 2009, upon receipt of a written request to 109 Raised Bill No. 851
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access data maintained under this section by a full-time permanent 110
employee of a nonprofit organization that is exempt from taxation 111
under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, or any 112
subsequent corresponding internal revenue code of the United States, 113
as from time to time amended, and that is organized and operated for 114
educational purposes, the Department of Education shall provide such 115
data to such requesting party not later than sixty days after such 116
request, provided such requesting party shall be responsible for the 117
reasonable cost of such request. The Department of Administrative 118
Services shall monitor the calculation of such fees charged for access to 119
or copies of such records to ensure that such fees are reasonable and 120
consistent with those charged by other state agencies. The Department 121
of Education shall respond to written requests under this section in the 122
order in which they are received. 123
(i) The superintendent of schools of a school district, or his or her 124
designee, may access information in the state-wide public school 125
information system regarding the state-wide mastery examination 126
under section 10-14n. Such access shall be for the limited purpose of 127
determining examination dates, examination scores and levels of 128
student achievement on such examinations for students enrolled in or 129
transferring to the school district of such superintendent. 130
This act shall take effect as follows and shall amend the following
sections:
Section 1 July 1, 2019 10-10a
Statement of Purpose:
To prohibit the collection of disaggregated student data on specific
ethnic subgroups unless such student data is required by federal law
or collected uniformly across the entire population of students.
[Proposed deletions are enclosed in brackets. Proposed additions are indicated by underline,
except that when the entire text of a bill or resolution or a section of a bill or resolution is new, it is
not underlined.]