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55–849 PDF 2010

HOW DATA CAN BE USED TO 

INFORM EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

EDUCATION AND LABOR 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 14, 2010 

Serial No. 111–54 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR 

GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Chairman 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii 

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Yvette D. Clarke, New York 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio 

Jared Polis, Colorado 

Paul Tonko, New York 

Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico 

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 

Northern Mariana Islands 

Dina Titus, Nevada 

Judy Chu, California 

John Kline, Minnesota, 

Senior Republican Member 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 

Bill Cassidy, Louisiana 

Tom McClintock, California 

Duncan Hunter, California 

David P. Roe, Tennessee 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director 

Barrett Karr, Minority Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on April 14, 2010 .............................................................................. 1 

Statement of Members: 

Kline, Hon. John, Senior Republican Member, Committee on Education 

and Labor ...................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6 

Study, ‘‘Children’s Educational Records and Privacy,’’ dated October 

28, 2009, Internet address to ................................................................ 5 

Miller, Hon. George, Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor ......... 1 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3 

Questions for the record submitted to Mr. Wenning, on behalf of 

Mr. Kucinich .......................................................................................... 74 

Statement of Witnesses: 

Hartley, Katie, teacher, value added data specialist, Miami East Local 

Schools, Miami County, OH ......................................................................... 28 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 31 

Kitchens, Joe, superintendent, Western Heights School District, Oklahoma City, OK .............................................................................................. 24 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 26 

Reidenberg, Joel R., professor of law and founding academic director, 

Center on Law and Information Policy, Fordham University School 

of Law ............................................................................................................ 32 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 36 

Wenning, Richard J., associate commissioner, Colorado Department of 

Education ....................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 11 

Responses to Mr. Kucinich’s questions for the record ............................ 75 

(1) 

HOW DATA CAN BE USED TO 

INFORM EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES 

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Washington, DC 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. George Miller [chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Miller, Payne, Scott, Woolsey, Hinojosa, 

McCarthy, Tierney, Kucinich, Wu, Holt, Davis, Hirono, Altmire, 

Hare, Shea-Porter, Polis, Sablan, Titus, Chu, Kline, Petri, Biggert, 

McMorris Rodgers, Guthrie, Cassidy, Roe, and Thompson. 

Staff present: Andra Belknap, Press Assistant; Calla Brown, 

Staff Assistant, Education; Jody Calemine, General Counsel; Jamie 

Fasteau, Senior Education Policy Advisor; Denise Forte, Director of 

Education Policy; David Hartzler, Systems Administrator; Fred 

Jones, Staff Assistant, Education; Kara Marchione, Education Policy Advisor; Sadie Marshall, Chief Clerk; Bryce McKibbon, Staff 

Assistant; Charmaine Mercer, Senior Education Policy Advisor; 

Alex Nock, Deputy Staff Director; Lillian Pace, Policy Advisor, Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education; Rachel Racusen, Communications Director; Meredith 

Regine, Junior Legislative Associate, Labor; Alexandria Ruiz, Staff 

Assistant; Melissa Salmanowitz, Press Secretary; Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director; Stephanie Arras, Legislative Assistant; 

James Bergeron, Deputy Director of Education and Human Services Policy; Kirk Boyle, General Counsel; Casey Buboltz, Coalitions 

and Member Services Coordinator; Barrett Karr, Staff Director; 

Alexa Marrero, Communications Director; Brian Newell, Press Secretary; Susan Ross, Director of Education and Human Resources 

Policy; Mandy Schaumburg, Education Policy Counsel; and Linda 

Stevens, Chief Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel. 

Chairman MILLER [presiding]. A quorum being present, the committee will come to order. 

Good morning. Welcome to our witnesses and our members joining us here. Today we will explore how effective data systems can 

help improve educational outcomes. This is a part of a series of 

hearings this committee is holding as we work in a bipartisan way 

to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 
2 

My colleagues have demonstrated their dedication to this bipartisan reauthorization process and all bring valuable expertise to 

the table. 

Mr. Holt and Mrs. McCarthy particularly have been leaders in 

the data arena for several years. Notably, together they have previously introduced legislation to improve data use in schools across 

the nation. 

Data is absolutely critical to education reform. Just like a successful company relies on sales reports to measure their success, 

schools need data to make informed and educated decisions about 

what is working and what isn’t. 

In many schools and districts, data is not used in the most meaningful way to make decisions, or even at all. It is unacceptable that 

education is only—the major enterprise in this country, on the 

whole, that doesn’t use data to make decisions. 

Teachers, parents, and school administrators and states need access to real-time information to know exactly how students are 

faring in school. We took a big step forward to address this need 

in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act when we required 

states to comply with the four assurances in order to be eligible for 

the historic investment in education. 

These assurances helped move the ball a little farther down the 

field for schools that are asking states to adopt college-and careerready standards tied to better assessments, to turn around the lowest performing schools, and to ensure teacher talent that is distributed fairly and to establish data systems that use the data to improve schools. 

We asked for these commitments from states, especially on the 

data front, for two reasons. One, we can no longer accept an education system that is willing to settle for less than the best of all 

of our students. 

The millions of students in classrooms today are our future 

innovators and engineers. If we are going to regain our footing as 

a global competitor in the world, we need to demand the best of 

our students, our teachers and our schools. 

And two, we need an effective longitudinal data system with 

focus on safety and privacy for our students that works to help 

schools succeed. 

Schools need student-level information in order to better educate 

every child, both for their own benefit and for our future as a nation. In Western Heights school district in Oklahoma, for example, 

school officials use data systems to help determine which students 

are—were the lowest performing. 

They realized that their mobile students, those who moved from 

school to school, were achieving at the lowest levels, and dropping 

out at the highest. After implementing the data system, the dropout rate in the district fell by 11 points in 2 years. 

If districts implemented early warning indicator systems in middle schools, they could identify the students most likely to drop out 

of high school and reach those students before they get off track. 

If a principal uses data to help identify teachers’ strengths in the 

classroom, the principal could work to replicate those achievements 

on a school-wide level. 
3 

If researchers were able to investigate state-level data, they 

could share the practices that are working best to help students 

succeed. 

Without data, schools are operating in the dark. Simply put, data 

systems work. That is why there has been a tremendous focus on 

data, in the next iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the new law can be a real catalyst for positive change 

in our schools. 

Since we announced we were working to rewrite ESEA, we have 

heard from thousands of stakeholders. Their input has been incredibly helpful. We all agree that the status quo is failing our children 

and won’t lead our children to the future. 

It is time we put the needs of our students and teachers at the 

top of our priorities. We can’t let our students suffer the failures 

of a system that doesn’t support them. We have an obligation to 

the children of this country to get it right the first time. That is 

why the data is so absolutely critical. 

It is time to give teachers the tools they need to make databased, informed decisions in the classroom. Critics of the use of 

data are operating under an antiquated school of thought. We have 

to take our schools to the future. 

When data is properly presented and where people are given 

skills to use it and know the purpose behind it, data can be a most 

valuable tool to school success. 

I want to thank in advance our witnesses for being here today 

and for their testimony that they will give in a moment. 

At this time I would like to recognize Congressman Kline, the 

senior Republican on the committee. 

[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Chairman, Committee on 

Education and Labor 

Good morning. 

Today we’ll explore how effective data systems can help improve education outcomes. 

This is a part of a series of hearings this committee is holding as we work in a 

bipartisan way to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

My colleagues have demonstrated their dedication to this bipartisan reauthorization process and all bring valuable expertise to the table. 

Mr. Holt and Mrs. McCarthy in particular have been leaders in the data arena 

for several years. Notably, together they have previously introduced legislation to 

improve data use in schools across the nation. 

Data is absolutely critical to education reform. 

Just like any complex organization relies on multiple indicators to measure their 

success, schools need data to make informed and educated decisions about what is 

working and what isn’t. 

But in many schools and districts, data is not used in the most meaningful way 

to make decisions, or even at all. 

It is unacceptable that education is the only major enterprise in this country that, 

on the whole, doesn’t use data as to make decisions. 

Teachers, parents, school administrators and states need access to real time data 

to know exactly how students are faring in school. 

We took a big step forward to address this need in the American Recovery and 

Reinvestment Act when we required states to comply with four assurances in order 

to be eligible for the historic investments in education. 

These assurances helped move the ball a little farther down the field for schools 

by asking states to adopt college and career ready standards tied to better assessments, turn around the lowest perform schools, ensure teacher talent is distributed 

fairly and establish data systems to use data to improve schools. 
4 

We asked for these commitments from states, especially on the data front, for two reasons. One, we can no longer accept an education system that is willing to settle for less 

than the best for our students. 

The millions of students in classrooms today are the future innovators and engi- neers. If we are going to regain our footing as a global competitor in the world, we have 

to demand the best for our schools, our teachers and our schools. 

And two, we know an effective longitudinal data system with a focus on the safety 

and privacy of our students works to help schools succeed. 

Schools need student level information in order to better educate every child— 

both for their own benefit and for our future as a nation. 

In the Western Heights school district in Oklahoma, for example, school officials 

used a data system to help determine which students were the lowest performing. 

They realized their mobile students, those who moved from school to school, were 

achieving at the lowest levels and dropping out at the highest. 

After implementing a data system, the dropout rate in the district fell by 11 

points in two years. 

If districts implement early warning indicator systems in middle schools, they 

could identify the students most likely to drop out of high school and reach those 

students before they get off track. 

If a principal uses data to help identify teachers’ strengths in the classroom, the 

principal could work to replicate their achievements on a school wide level. 

If researchers were able to investigate state-level data, they could share the practices that are working best to help students succeed. 

Without data, schools are operating in the dark. Simply put, data systems work. 

That’s why there has to be a tremendous focus on data in the next iteration of 

the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, so the new law can be a real catalyst 

for positive change in our schools. 

Since we announced we were working to rewrite ESEA, we’ve heard from thousands of stakeholders. Their input has been incredibly helpful. 

We all agree that the status quo is failing our children and won’t lead our children to the future. 

It’s time we put the needs of our students and teachers at the top of our priorities. 

We can’t let our students suffer the failures of a system that doesn’t support 

them. 

We have an obligation to the children of this country to get it right the first time. 

This is why data is so absolutely critical. 

It’s time we give teachers the tools they need to make data-based, informed decisions in the classrooms. 

Critics of the use of data are operating under an antiquated school of thought. 

We have to take our schools to the future. 

When data is properly presented and when people are given skills to use it and 

know the purpose behind it, data can be the most valuable tool for school success. 

I’d like to thank our witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing your 

testimony. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Good morning to the witnesses and to all present. We are here 

this morning to examine how data can be used to inform educational outcomes. To be sure, educational data systems play an integral role in efforts to create more sophisticated academic performance measures. In other words, data help us understand how our 

students and their teachers are performing. 

Yet no conversation about educational data systems would be 

complete without a discussion of student privacy. Technological advances and research opportunities have created a thirst for individualized student data like never before. Our commitment to privacy 

and data protection must intensify at the same pace. 

Unfortunately, the research indicates not nearly enough is being 

done to safeguard our students’ records. We will hear this morning 

from Professor Joel Reidenberg of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law School—welcome, Professor—who has 
5 

been at the forefront in examining the privacy implications of longitudinal data systems. 

These massive state-controlled databases collect personally identifiable information about schoolchildren, information designed to 

be interoperable among a variety of data systems, leaving open the 

possibility that this data could be mined for uses far beyond its intended purposes. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to include Professor Reidenberg’s report from October 2009. 

Chairman MILLER. Without objection, it will be made part of the 

record of the hearing. 

[The study, ‘‘Children’s Educational Records and Privacy,’’ dated 

October 28, 2009, may be accessed at the following Internet address:] 

http://law.fordham.edu/assets/CLIP/CLIP—Report—Childrens—Privacy— 

Final.pdf 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you. 

Professor Reidenberg will discuss his findings in detail, but there 

are two areas of concern I would like to highlight. First, the Fordham study found privacy protections lacking in most states. In 

some cases, states are not even complying with the federal educational rights and privacy act. 

Second, the study highlighted the risk that individual state data 

systems could be sewn together to create a de facto national database, a massive federal collection of individuals student information that could include not just academic histories but sensitive 

personal data, including Social Security numbers, demographic and 

financial characteristics, discipline records and health or behavioral 

information. 

The study describes it this way ‘‘Common data standards by definition facilitate the combination of multiple data sets into one national data warehouse of K-12 children, which in turn could be 

combined with data from post-secondary data systems to create an 

unprecedented national database of personal information.’’ 

The prospect of these data systems being used for more than academic tracking in grade school is hardly far-fetched. In fact, the 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill, which 

we now know contained a host of provisions having nothing to do 

with job creation, included an additional $250 million for the existing state longitudinal data systems. 

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the long-term 

goal of the program is to enable all states to create comprehensive 

P-20 systems which will track students from almost literally the 

cradle to their careers. 

The emphasis on interoperability makes clear these systems are 

intended to link personal and academic information from elementary and secondary school to workforce data systems that attract— 

that track adults later in life. These vast collections of information 

could significantly undermine individual privacy, particularly if 

they are compromised through ineffective security measures. 

In this era of technology and vast Web-based information archives, data that becomes public can never again truly be kept pri-
6 

vate. The potential privacy cost of these data systems, particularly 

if they do not maintain proper safeguards, cannot be ignored. 

Yet we must also consider the monetary costs associated with 

significant new data collection requirements. States and local 

school districts take on significant financial and personnel burdens 

to comply with data collection requirements. 

At a time when local schools are seeking less red tape and fewer 

federal requirements, we must carefully weigh the potential benefits with these costs. The stimulus significantly expanded the scope 

of federal involvement in student data collection, the consequences 

of which are only just beginning to emerge. 

I remain deeply concerned about student privacy both under current programs and in light of proposed expansions in data collection and use through reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

I shared a number of these concerns in a letter to Secretary Duncan in February of this year, and I am eager to continue a dialogue 

about how individual privacy protection will be maintained and 

strengthened. 

As I said at the outset, data systems are an important component of our efforts to measure and improve student academic 

achievement and teacher quality. Yet as technology advances, we 

must ensure the data collected is narrow in scope and tightly controlled with its use carefully monitored. 

The more data collected, the greater the risk of exposure, which 

is why every effort must be made to bring privacy laws into the 

21st century to protect the student information. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

[The statement of Mr. Kline follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Senior Republican Member, 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Thank you Chairman Miller. We’re here this morning to examine how data can 

be used to inform educational outcomes. To be sure, educational data systems play 

an integral role in efforts to create more sophisticated academic performance measures. In other words, data help us understand how our students—and their teachers—are performing. 

Yet no conversation about educational data systems would be complete without 

a discussion of student privacy. Technological advances and research opportunities 

have created a thirst for individualized student data like never before. Our commitment to privacy and data protection must intensify at the same pace. 

Unfortunately, the research indicates not nearly enough is being done to safeguard our students’ records. We’ll hear this morning from Professor Joel Reidenberg 

(RIDE-en-berg) of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham Law 

School, who has been at the forefront in examining the privacy implications of longitudinal data systems. These massive, state-controlled databases collect personally 

identifiable information about school children—information designed to be interoperable among a variety of data systems, leaving open the possibility that this data 

could be mined for uses far beyond its intended purposes. 

Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to include Professor Reidenberg’s October 2009 report—entitled ‘‘Children’s Educational Records and Privacy: A Study 

of Elementary and Secondary School Reporting Systems’’—in the printed hearing 

record. 

Professor Reidenberg will discuss his findings in detail, but there are two areas 

of concern I’d like to highlight. First, the Fordham study found privacy protections 

lacking in most states—in some cases, states are not even complying with the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act. 

Second, the study highlighted the risk that individual state data systems could 

be sewn together to create a de facto national database—a massive federal collection 

of individual student information that could include not just academic histories but 
7 

sensitive personal data including social security numbers, demographic and financial characteristics, discipline records, and health or behavioral information. The 

study describes it this way: ‘‘Common data standards, by definition, facilitate the 

combination of multiple data sets into one national data warehouse of K-12 children, 

which in turn could be combined with data from post-secondary data systems to create an unprecedented national database of personal information.’’ 

The prospect of these data systems being used for more than academic tracking 

in grade school is hardly far-fetched. In fact, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—the so-called stimulus bill, which we now know contained a host of provisions having nothing to do with job creation—included an additional $250 million 

for the existing state longitudinal data systems. 

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the long-term goal of the program 

is to enable all states to create comprehensive P-20 systems, which will track students from almost literally the cradle to their careers. The emphasis on ‘‘interoperability’’ makes clear these systems are intended to link personal and academic information from elementary and secondary school to workforce data systems that track 

adults later in life. 

These vast collections of information could significantly undermine individual privacy, particularly if they are compromised through ineffective security measures. In 

this era of technology and vast web-based information archives, data that become 

public can never again truly be kept private. 

The potential privacy cost of these data systems—particularly if they do not maintain proper safeguards—cannot be ignored. Yet we must also consider the monetary 

costs associated with significant new data collection requirements. 

States and local school districts take on significant financial and personnel burdens to comply with data collection requirements. At a time when local schools are 

seeking less red tape and fewer federal requirements, we must carefully weigh the 

potential benefits with these costs. 

The stimulus significantly expanded the scope of federal involvement in student 

data collection, the consequences of which are only just beginning to emerge. I remain deeply concerned about student privacy, both under current programs and in 

light of proposed expansions in data collection and use through reauthorization of 

the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I shared a number of these concerns 

in a letter to Secretary Duncan in February of this year, and I am eager to continue 

a dialogue about how individual privacy protections will be maintained and 

strengthened. 

As I said at the outset, data systems are an important component of our efforts 

to measure and improve student academic achievement and teacher quality. Yet as 

technology advances, we must ensure the data collected is narrow in scope and 

tightly controlled, with its use carefully monitored. 

The more data collected, the greater the risk of exposure—which is why every effort must be made to bring privacy laws into the 21st century to protect student 

information. 

Thank you, and I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. I thank the gentleman, and I would like now 

to introduce the panel of witnesses for the hearing. 

But without objection, I would first yield to the gentleman from 

Colorado, Mr. Polis, to briefly introduce our first witness, Richard 

Wenning. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

It is really my honor to introduce Rich Wenning, who I got to 

know during my time on the state board of education and being involved with educational reform in Colorado. 

Rich Wenning is currently the associate commissioner at the Colorado Department of Education, where he leads the Colorado Department of Education’s public policy development and the design 

and implementation of Colorado’s great educational accountability 

system and growth model, which we are going to be hearing about. 

He is the architect of the Colorado Growth Model. 

Before he joined Colorado Department of Education, Mr. 

Wenning was vice president for quality and accountability at the 
8 

Colorado League of Charter Schools, where I had the opportunity 

to work with him in that capacity as well. 

Mr. Wenning served as an executive on loan to the superintendent of Denver public schools, where he focused on strengthening the district’s performance management practices. 

Before Mr. Wenning moved to Colorado from Washington, D.C., 

he was president of the Education Performance Network, an affiliate of the New American Schools, not to be confused with the New 

America School, which is the charter school that I had founded and 

run prior to getting here, where he led a consulting practice focused on educational accountability systems and new school development. 

Mr. Wenning also served as a senior policy advisor to the CEO 

of the D.C. public schools during the school district’s takeover by 

the congressionally appointed D.C. Control Board. While at D.C. 

public schools, he headed the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs 

and Educational Accountability. 

Prior to joining D.C. public schools, Mr. Wenning served as a 

clerk for the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the District 

of Columbia and as a staff member on the Senate Appropriations 

Subcommittee on Labor, Education and Health and Human Services. 

Mr. Wenning began his career at the Government Accountability 

Office where he led research on accountability and equity issues as 

well as market-based education reform strategies. 

And it is my honor to introduce Mr. Wenning to our Education 

and Labor Committee. 

Yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

Our next witness will be Mr. Kitchens, a superintendent of public schools for the last 15 years. Joe Kitchens is the national leader 

in the use of data systems to improve school achievement. 

Mr. Kitchens was instrumental in developing longitudinal data 

that enables teachers to make immediate and effective decisions in 

the classroom. In 2008 the Data Quality Campaign recognized Mr. 

Kitchens as the district data leader of the year. 

Katie Hartley is currently—teaches junior high math at Miami 

East Junior High in West Central Ohio. I am just trying to get my 

geography down here—in the analysis and the use of value-added 

data to make informed decisions concerning curriculum, instruction 

and academic programming. 

Joel Reidenberg is a professor of law and founding academic director of the Center of Law and Information Policy at Fordham 

Law School. He is an expert on information technology law and policy. Professor Reidenberg examines information privacy and Internet regulation. 

Professor Reidenberg has served as an advisor on data privacy, 

including special assistant to the attorney general for the state of 

Washington. 

Welcome to all of you. Before we begin, let me explain the lighting system. When you begin a green light will go on. You will have 

5 minutes to make your presentation. In fact, we are going to extend to you a couple of minutes because I know some of you are 
9 

also demonstrating the use of this information and you have got to 

pass a computer back and forth. 

And then when the red light comes on, you can see that—in a 

coherent fashion, if you can bring your testimony to a close, we 

would appreciate it. 

So, Mr. Wenning, we are going to begin with you. Welcome. 

STATEMENT OF RICHARD WENNING, ASSOCIATE 

COMMISSIONER, COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 

Mr. WENNING. I think we are on now. There we go. 

So, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for inviting my testimony today on behalf of the Colorado Department of 

Education. 

I would like to provide my remarks in the context of Colorado’s 

effort to create an aligned state and federal accountability system 

that maximized the use of longitudinal data to support state and 

local performance management purposes. 

Educational accountability systems include three basic components: rewards, sanctions and public reporting. Colorado’s approach 

to educational accountability attempts to balance these components 

to promote local ownership of high-quality performance information. 

Local ownership drives insight and action by users—students, 

parents, educators, administrators, business leaders, all members 

of the public. The key is fostering a common understanding among 

these stakeholders. 

Colorado believes that the results we expect must start with the 

end in mind, and that is our statutory bright line principle of 100 

percent of students becoming college-and career-ready by the time 

they graduate. 

This universal goal clarifies our public responsibility and the 

focus of our accountability and performance management systems, 

and we are very pleased to see this principle in the president’s 

blueprint for ESEA reauthorization. 

Growth models like the Colorado Growth Model make it possible 

to establish ambitious growth expectations for every student, based 

on what they need to be on track, and roll this up for state and 

federal accountability purposes. 

The clarity of the goal of readiness by exit, particularly in the 

context of common high standards, supports an essential, powerful 

and ongoing conversation between every student and his or her 

teacher and parents about how much growth the student is making 

and whether it is good enough. 

Most important is a conversation about how each student, teacher and parent must work together to ensure that goals and standards are met. And I refer to the capacity to constructively engage 

in this fundamental conversation, using information effectively to 

make adjustments and achieve goals, as Performance Management 

Capacity. 

This is the essential role of state longitudinal data systems. The 

key function: help parents constructively engage with educators 

and become knowledgeable choosers of schools. 

The availability of outstanding instructional improvement and 

social collaboration technologies and incentives for using them, par-
10 

ticularly through initiatives focusing on educator effectiveness, represent vital tools for bringing about breakthrough improvements in 

performance. 

Thanks to advantageous timing—major advances in technology 

coinciding with Race to the Top—the nation is in a position to provide students and teachers the tools they need to achieve the results we expect. And we believe that we are primed to bring about 

breakthrough educator collaboration about performance and practice. 

Underpinning this collaboration in Colorado is a new and public 

conversation about performance fostered by SchoolView and the 

Colorado Growth Model. SchoolView and the Colorado Growth 

Model are state-owned tools that run on open-source software, and 

we are happy to share them with other states at no cost. 

We are pleased that several other states have already adopted 

our growth model, promoting cross-state collaboration and comparisons—Massachusetts, Indiana, Arizona, and I just learned that 

Wisconsin will be adopting the growth model as well that we have 

developed. 

What I am going to do is just show you a quick demonstration 

of what the public has access to, and you have got screen shots of 

the password-protected version in my testimony. And of course, 

that is secure data that only educators have access to, but that 

does allow an educator to get down to an individual student and 

have a conversation with mom and dad about how a child’s 

progress is doing. 

The next key step is merging that with instructional resources so 

every teacher and student can be engaged in information about 

how each child is progressing. 

I am going to quickly bring up two districts. First I want to orient you to the basic four quadrant diagram that we always use. We 

look at growth on the horizontal axis and achievement on the 

vertical axis, so that we can understand schools’ performance in a 

simple manner. 

I am going to pick Adams 14 School District, and then I am going 

to go ahead and pick Pueblo School District, and we are going to 

contrast two middle schools. Let me find Pueblo here. 

And you have got the screen shots of this as well. I am going to 

go and hit—choose only middle schools. And this is a nice tool just 

to help benchmark performance. 

The horizontal line in the middle reflects the average percent 

proficient or advanced in the state of Colorado. The vertical line is 

at 50th percentile growth. That is a year’s growth in a year’s time. 

I am going to highlight two schools. As we can see, we have just 

highlighted Kearney Middle School with an enrollment of 470, a little bit below average in achievement, 44 percent proficient or advanced. Median growth percentile of 74—that means students at 

Kearney, the typical child here, makes as much progress or more 

than 74 percent of kids in Colorado with the same starting point. 

Here, in a school that is a little bit above average in achievement, Corwin International Magnet School, the median growth percentile is 28, meaning the typical student in Corwin is only growing as well as 28 percent of the kids in Colorado with the same 

starting point. 
11 

Now we can go ahead in here—and this, of course, is all anonymous data at this point. We are going to disaggregate by other 

groups. And we can see that students eligible for free or reducedprice lunch are growing at a 29th growth percentile, meaning they 

are only doing as well as 29 percent of the kids in the state with 

the same starting point. 

We go up a level and we can take a look at this school, which, 

again, would have lower achievement but much higher growth, and 

take a look at students in the other group category here, and we 

can see that for low-income students at Kearney, their growth percentile is 74.5, meaning they have got very high growth, making 

very high progress, even though in our current system of looking 

at AYP both of these schools would look the same, but we can see 

that there are dramatically different growth rates among them. 

So you know, this kind of disclosure fosters a much more informed understanding of school and student performance, one that 

all of our stakeholders are becoming familiar with and interestingly, our educator associations are strong advocates of, because of 

the ability for teachers to understand what performance is like in 

different schools. 

Federal policy can either support or hinder the understanding, 

ownership and effective use of performance information at the individual, local and state level through the metrics required and rewards and sanctions established. 

As we reauthorize ESEA, it is critical that we get the federal, 

state and local roles right and give states sufficient latitude to 

build the performance capacity—the performance management capacity of stakeholders to achieve the breakthrough results that we 

need. 

Incremental changes in this relationship in access to data won’t 

even come close to the unprecedented productivity expectations we 

seek for public education in the United States as we aim to getting 

all students ready for college and career success. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, and I will 

be, of course, happy to respond to any questions that you may 

have. 

[The statement of Mr. Wenning follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Richard J. Wenning, Associate Commissioner, 

Colorado Department of Education 

Thank you for inviting my testimony on behalf of the Colorado Department of 

Education at today’s hearing. I’d like to provide my remarks in the context of Colorado’s effort to create an aligned state and federal accountability system focused on 

all students reaching college and career readiness by high school graduation. 

How is Colorado refining its use of student performance data to improve accountability for student growth, better inform school improvement efforts, and more clearly communicate with the public? 

Educational accountability systems include three basic components: rewards, 

sanctions and public reporting. Colorado’s approach to educational accountability attempts to balance these components to promote local ownership of high-quality performance information. We believe this local ownership drives insight and action by 

users: students, parents, educators, administrators, policymakers, business leaders, 

and the public-at-large. 

Colorado believes that the results we expect must start with the end in mind: 

namely our statutory bright-line principle of all students becoming college- and career-ready by high school graduation. This universal goal clarifies our public responsibility and the focus of our accountability and performance management systems: 

we must maximize individual student academic growth toward the destination of 
12 

college and career readiness. We were very pleased to see this principle reflected 

in the President’s Blueprint for ESEA Reauthorization. 

However, the Blueprint’s intended use of the 2020 date for school vs. state accountability is unclear. Colorado feels strongly that an arbitrary date certain is not 

helpful for states to calibrate their school accountability systems. This is because 

a very credible date exists for every student, namely their graduation date. Growth 

models make it possible to establish ambitious growth expectations for every student, based on what they need to be on track and also allow a roll up for state and 

federal accountability purposes. This concept is discussed further below. 

The clarity of the goal of readiness by exit, particularly in the context of common 

high standards, supports an essential, powerful and ongoing conversation between 

every student and his or her teachers and parents about how much growth the student is making, whether it is good enough to catch up to proficiency (if the student 

is not proficient), keep up at proficiency (if the student is already proficient), or to 

move up to advanced levels of achievement. Most important is a conversation about 

how each student, teacher and parent must work together to ensure that the student meets goals and standards. I refer to the capacity to constructively engage in 

this fundamental conversation, using information effectively to make adjustments 

and achieve goals, as Performance Management Capacity. Plain and consistent language (like catch up and keep up) promotes meaningful conversations and illustrates the importance of focusing on the user of information when designing accountability systems. 

The availability of outstanding instructional improvement and social collaboration 

technologies and incentives for using them (particularly through initiatives focusing 

on educator effectiveness) represent vital tools and opportunities for break-through 

performance improvements. Thanks to advantageous timing—major advances in 

technology coinciding with Race to the Top—the nation is in a position to provide 

students and educators the tools they need and deserve to achieve the outcomes we 

expect. We are primed to promote break-through educator collaboration about performance and practice. This is the essential role of state longitudinal data systems. 
13 

Underpinning this collaboration in Colorado is a new and broad public conversation about performance fostered by SchoolView and the Colorado Growth Model (see 

figures below). SchoolView is a state-owned tool that we are happy to share with 

other states. The Colorado Growth Model uses an open-source methodology run on 

open-source software. We are making the display tools available at no cost to other 

states through a memorandum of understanding, including commitment to the Creative Commons intellectual property agreement we use. 
14 

The Colorado Growth Model was approved by the U.S. Department of Education 

for use in its growth model pilot. It uses a common measure to describe how much 

growth each student makes and how much growth is needed to reach state standards. In doing so, it provides a complete history of individual test scores for all students. The model depicts growth in a user-friendly and interactive display that provides clear information about student progress toward reaching state proficiency levels within a specific period of time. 

The Colorado Growth Model supports a common understanding of how individual 

students and groups of students progress from year to year toward state performance standards based on where each student begins. The model focuses attention 

on measuring and maximizing student progress over time and reveals where, and 

among which students, the strongest growth is happening—and where it is not. It 

recognizes that the most effective schools are those that produce the highest sustained rates of student academic growth over time. Those schools may or may not 

be schools with the highest test scores every year. 

The Colorado Growth Model applies the common measure of Individual Student 

Growth Percentiles to school, district and state performance in a normative and criterion-referenced manner. The growth model provides a growth percentile ranging 

from 1 to 99 for every student—also described as ‘‘Low,’’ ‘‘Typical’’ or ‘‘High’’—and 

provides the percentile needed for a student to reach Partially Proficient, Proficient 

and Advanced levels within one, two, or three years. 

The model provides Median Growth Percentiles that are useful for benchmarking 

purposes and analysis of gaps in growth rates among groups of students. The overall 
15 

State Median Growth Percentile for every grade is 50, so it is useful to look for differences from the 50th percentile when benchmarking the growth of the typical student. 

The model also provides information on the adequacy of growth to reach and 

maintain state-defined performance levels—we refer to these as Catch Up and Keep 

Up. On Track to Catch Up identifies students scoring Unsatisfactory or Partially 

Proficient in the prior year who achieved enough growth to reach Proficient within 

three years or by 10th grade. On Track to Keep Up identifies students already scoring Proficient or Advanced who achieved enough growth to stay at least Proficient 

over three years or until 10th grade. 

The Colorado Growth Model fills an important gap in the current accountability 

system required by NCLB. To close the achievement gaps that plague our education 

system, we must eliminate gaps in how children are growing academically and ensure that our neediest students grow faster—more than a year’s growth in a year’s 

time—so that they catch up. The following graphics show the percentage of students 

achieving enough growth to catch up or keep up in Colorado. 

Because AYP today is focused on each school’s percentage of students who score 

‘‘at proficiency’’ each year, it creates an overly anxious short-term focus on students 

‘‘on the cusp’’ of proficiency—the ones who should be easiest to push over the hump 

and therefore give schools a better rating. 

Instead, we should encourage teachers to focus on maximizing every child’s 

progress toward ambitious standards—and developing every child to his or her full 
16 

potential—while encouraging schools to focus on long-term effectiveness. The federal 

accountability system should measure whether that is happening. As we measure 

the performance of schools and districts, we must provide individual student data 

that educators need in order to focus on improving student learning. Every educator 

and parent should know in plain language how much growth a child has achieved 

and how much growth each child needs to reach state standards. 

Consistent with these design principles, the Colorado Department of Education 

used SchoolView to deploy a set of interactive Web-based display tools to provide 

Colorado Growth Model information about district, school and student performance 

to parents, educators and the public. (See images at end of document.) These display 

tools enable and promote new, well-informed conversations about learning among 

educators, students and parents while providing unprecedented public transparency 

in support of accountability, which allows us to disclose more, use fewer punitive 

labels, drive strong stakeholder buy-in, and foster sustained public pressure for reform. 

Colorado is very interested in collaborating with other states to create a common 

data visualization platform to drive broad public understanding about educational 

effectiveness and cross-state performance benchmarking. We are pleased that Arizona and Indiana have elected to work with us on this effort. In addition, Massachusetts has adopted our growth model for its use. Several other states are expected 

to adopt it as well. 

How can federal policy best promote improved student achievement? 

Federal policy can promote dramatically improved student outcomes by ensuring 

a coherent accountability system focused squarely on building the performance management capacity of stakeholders. For this to happen, the federal role in local school 

management decisions must be redefined in a manner that recognizes and respects 

the essential role that states, local educational agencies, schools and individual educators must play if sustained high is to become the norm. Federal policy can either 

support or hinder the understanding, ownership, and effective use of performance 

information at the individual, local and state levels through the metrics required 

and rewards and sanctions established. 

State education agencies (SEAs) play a critical role, and SEAs should be repurposed to support school effectiveness. This will require federal support. SEAs 

must become reliable providers and brokers of high-quality support and service to 

schools and districts. They must focus on sustaining continuous improvement in 

schools and districts while also ensuring that they meet compliance obligations. To 

achieve this aim, SEAs will need to invest in research and development, program 

evaluation, and diagnostic school and district reviews focused on improvement efforts. This may require reallocation of resources. SEAs will also need to develop coherent knowledge management strategies to sustain their capacity levels. 

Flexibility is also necessary. Expanding allowable uses of funds would allow SEAs 

to invest in capacity-building strategies to deliver ambitious, desired results. ESEA 

reauthorization should extend far greater leeway in the use of federal funds at the 

state and local levels, but only to those SEAs that adopt high-quality accountability 

systems based on internationally benchmarked standards for college and career 

readiness. Incorporating these expectations into the reauthorization of ESEA will go 

far in ensuring students are truly prepared for college or rewarding careers. 

Provide Flexibility in Identifying Low-Performing Schools for Intervention 

In reauthorizing ESEA, Congress should be cautious in prescribing the details of 

how to identify the bottom five percent of schools based on achievement and growth. 

Some flexibility is needed so that states can calibrate accountability systems to meet 

the performance improvement needs of their particular schools and districts. The essential condition is that states must have a credible approach and rationale and be 

publicly transparent in how they do this. For states without an approved accountability system designed to identify the bottom five percent, ESEA could contain a 

default approach. 

For example, there are more chronically low-performing schools in Colorado than 

we can effectively intervene in with federal School Improvement Grant [1003(g)] resources. (See figures below.) As we prioritize schools for intervention, we would like 

to consider persistence and severity of need and whether the intervention fits the 

problem and can have a scalable impact. Also, to help ensure success, we need to 

engage communities to understand and support the change. Uncertainty about who 

is on the ‘‘federal list’’ vs. the ‘‘state list’’ has been unhelpful and has set back our 

efforts to take on our lowest-performing schools. 

To illustrate, consider two hypothetical low-performing schools. One is a high-poverty, chronically underperforming high school with 1,000 students and the other is 

a high-poverty, 50-student alternative education school with 20 continuously en-
17 

rolled students from one year to the next. The alternative school focuses on students 

who have been incarcerated or have drug treatment needs and helps transition kids 

back to regular high school or helps students earn GEDs. Many of these very students have experienced failure and disengagement at the comprehensive high 

school. Both schools are persistently low-performing, but the large high school is a 

few schools higher in the rankings and thus doesn’t make it on the ‘‘Tier 2’’ list. 

However, its poor performance is a direct cause of the need for the alternative 

school, now targeted for turnaround. 

Colorado would like discretion to determine which school to serve—to attack root 

causes rather than symptoms. The large high school is a good fit for turnaround. 

The alternative school is not. Forcing a leadership change at the alternative school 

could have a negative impact on student engagement and the school is doing about 

as well as other alternative schools. Without a doubt, we need to take on improvements in our alternative schools. However, state ownership and discretion are critical when we determine where to invest scarce resources in order to increase the 

supply of high-performing schools, to reach the largest number of students and 

maximize positive impact. 

Conclusions on which schools constitute the bottom five percent depend on the 

particular analytical lens one uses to identify schools for intervention. Consider the 

following graphics. The first graphic shows the lowest-performing five percent of 

schools in Colorado based on standardized growth and achievement data (growth 

weighted 2:1) over a combined three-year period across reading and math. The second and third graphics show the same schools highlighted by subject area. The axes 

reflect combined three-year student median growth rates and percentages proficient 

or advanced. While the first graphic suggests a tight cluster of low-performing 

schools, the other graphics show the variability of performance by subject area. The 

point here is that there is not just one way to identify the lowest five percent. Performance profiles vary by elementary, middle and high school levels. Some schools 

perform better in one subject or the other. ESEA should leave room for state discretion in making these determinations. 
18 
19 
20 
21 
22 
23 
24 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Kitchens? You need your microphone. 

STATEMENT OF JOE KITCHENS, ED.D, SUPERINTENDENT OF 

SCHOOLS, WESTERN HEIGHTS SCHOOLS 

Mr. KITCHENS. Yes. Okay. Got it? 

Chairman MILLER. Is the green light on? Yes, I think you are on. 

Mr. KITCHENS. Yes. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. KITCHENS. Thank you very much. 

It is indeed an honor to be here today, and I have my trusted 

assistant, Dr. Lisa McLaughlin, with me today, and she drives the 

boat here, so to speak. 

I wanted to start with a picture. You know, a picture sometimes 

can tell a thousand words, and so we have a picture that we would 

like to show the committee, and this is a picture of our graduation 

last year. 

And this is the way it has been for the last 5 years at Western 

Heights schools in Oklahoma City. Every year in a message of accountability we go to our people and we say, ‘‘This is a cohort of 

students that we enrolled in the ninth grade, and this is how many 

of that cohort dropped out, and this is how many of that cohort 

graduated, and this is how many of that cohort that we totally impacted and served.’’ 

And the message is simple, I think, in America right now. This 

is not the same country as when I was growing up in the 1960s. 

I entered the ninth grade. I knew who I would graduate with. I understood that. Now it is not quite that way. 
25 

In this particular diagram, every year we lose—or every 4 years 

we lose 45 percent of our students, Mr. Chairman. We have to do 

something about this. We have to retool America’s schools to deal 

with this issue of mobility. 

And so if you come to our school district this year, I promise you 

this will be the way it will be, and we will tell in the most serious 

way of accountability how things are going with our public school. 

If we can go forward, at Western Heights, we, too, operate and 

give our public an understanding of what is going on with our 

school system. We use an enterprise model. We want to show the 

performance of every student and every teacher’s classroom, and 

we practice what we call managed access for privacy control. 

That is, the teachers used records of her students and her students only. Parent use the records of her family, their family, only. 

Principal views records of students in the site only. And it took us 

a while to get to that point, but that is where we are. 

So we are going to go forward, and we are going to go directly 

into our network right now, live, and we will show you a student’s 

record that we have permission to show, and—if we didn’t lose our 

login. We are going to have to log in right quick and catch the student record. Timed out on us. 

And as I said, we maintain total control, managed access control, 

of the record. If the status of a family changes, Mr. Chairman, we 

have automated controls that shut down access to the family 

record. And that way, we are protecting the privacy of individuals. 

And we need to come on down to the student record, Mr. Anderson. Okay. And now you see the record. And this is real-time access 

of data. So we are going to look at Sean’s enrollment, and it is not 

just real time. It is historical data. 

So let’s look at current enrollment. Let’s look at all enrollment. 

That is the current enrollment status, and he has been enrolled 

with us for 6 or 7 years, so we have historical data. One of the critical things about data in America is to—in the schools is to have 

access to historical data. 

Let’s look at schedule data. This is not something that you will 

normally see. And this is a current schedule. This is live data of 

Sean’s current schedule, but in historical terms, let’s look at Sean’s 

schedule for the last 3 years. 

So for the past 3 years, we have been able to pull up historical 

schedules. If you wanted an electronic transcript, this is the way 

it would have to work. That is year seven. Let’s get year eight. So, 

year nine data. Okay. Go back up. Go get year eight data. That is 

year nine. Okay. So you can see that we are moving back and forth 

in schedules over time. 

So let’s go to attendance information. So we are gathering all of 

this information on the child, and we are going to get daily attendance right now, today. And if you could, let’s just get it for the year, 

full year. And there it is. And if you want historical data, we can 

go back in time and pull it for 3 or 4 years, every year. Okay. 

Let’s offer the grades, the current grades. And as I said, the 

mother signed a release and understands how this is being used. 

And there are the grades. And let’s look at the assessment information. Okay. Let’s look at results on assessments. And let’s look at 

the ACT plan. And here is the data on the plan. 
26 

Let’s go back. Let’s look at a state test. The EOIs—these are 

state tests. And you are actually seeing how the record can pull up. 

Let’s get it. And Algebra I assessment—we can go back. We can hit 

another assessment. 

And every assessment that the district gives is now available to 

the teacher, and the teacher of record only. And this allows us to 

move in and out, okay. 

Now, at ‘‘other’’—and this is what I call a cross boundary—we 

are actually pulling data from the child nutrition system into the 

system. And so we have what we call cross-boundary transformation of data, twelve disparate data systems working simultaneously in managed access. The only reason anybody here is able 

to see this today is because this parent has signed off to let that 

happen. We can shut that down, okay. 

And let’s go in at that point. Now, I would say to the people here 

in D.C., to our government, it is time to deal with mobility. You 

know, we have to do this on behalf of our children. 

This is not the same society as we had 25, 30, 40 years ago in 

the sense of we have people on the move. And we need to move 

data with children so we can make informed decisions about their 

educational lives. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Kitchens follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Joe Kitchens, Superintendent, Western Heights 

School District, Oklahoma City, OK 

We live in a world where rapid advances in technology are commonplace, and 

leveraging technology to improve productivity is expected. With the passage of The 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, there now exists a ‘‘oncein-a-lifetime’’ opportunity to realize dramatic leaps in educational improvement to 

prepare our children for the future. According to the Data Quality Campaign (DQC, 

2010), ‘‘the education sector is on the cusp of becoming an information-based enterprise.’’ It follows that the development of enterprise-based data systems are essential for the nation’s educational progress. 

A true enterprise-based system always has, as its focus, the ‘‘product’’ to be produced. In an education-based enterprise environment, the ‘‘product’’ is student success. An effective education—based enterprise system provides for the creation, storage and use of data from multiple disparate sources. Diverse data collection, combined with the application of effective rules for data management, means that enterprise-based educational systems hold great promise for impacting the school improvement process in a positive manner. Educators at all levels, from local classrooms to district offices to state and federal education agencies, must recognize that 

true school improvement—the type that is lasting and meaningful—will occur only 

when school systems and agencies are simultaneously supported via interdependent, 

classroom-driven longitudinal data systems that provide near real-time, appropriately aggregated/disaggregated data to students, teachers, parents and other 

stakeholders, including state and federal agencies. 

The evolution of effective enterprise-based education systems will determine 

whether districts and states will actually be able to create huge improvements in 

success that these times demand. School improvement must become dynamic, where 

success is emulated and failure is eliminated. Such effective classroom-based, enterprise-oriented longitudinal data systems can be empowered through the use of 

emerging technologies (with protection of private data via managed access), so that 

stakeholders at all levels may better understand the real-time impact of success and 

failure in our nation’s classrooms. 

Enterprise-based Longitudinal Data Systems 

So, where do we begin? The classroom, of course! There are many educational 

issues to consider: 

• While enterprise systems should be designed to support ‘‘any time, any place’’ 

learning, where does the majority of student learning occur at this time? Answer: 

in the classroom. 
27 

• Where do teachers and students most commonly interact in support of learning 

activities? Answer: in the classroom. 

• At a minimum, where should educators strive to develop an immediate impact 

on student learning? Answer: It all begins in the classroom. 

• Who can most effectively impact student learning? Answer: the teacher. 

• Who among us can best influence students to achieve their potential? Answer: 

teachers, peers, parents, and mentors—those typically engaged in student support 

activities. 

All education initiatives should be challenged as to what value-add they will bring 

to the nation’s students. It only makes sense that real and effective investment in 

the national education system must be initiated and measured in terms of individual student growth. Effective learning is personal, sometimes complex and always best supported by quality data analysis that informs instruction on a continuous, near real-time basis. It makes ‘‘BIG’’ sense that statewide longitudinal data 

systems (SLDS) and their continuous management be inexorably and effectively 

linked to America’s classrooms. Real school improvement in America is contingent 

on the simultaneous development of seamless, enterprise-based longitudinal data 

systems at classroom, site, district and state levels across the nation that is reflected back to the enterprise system product—in this case, student success. 

The United States Department of Education (USDOE) has supported the creation 

and deployment of SLDS/enterprise-based initiatives in almost all of the states. 

These efforts need to be integrated and become a very critical aspect of educational 

improvement activities in all of America’s schools. It is crucial that Americans have 

confidence that public education programs are in fact improving. When there are 

problems in schools, the public must know that those problems will be successfully 

addressed. This presents the case for enterprise-based, multi-level school management systems within a state’s existing infrastructure. In principle, real school improvement activities must originate at the individual student level. Growth modeling of individual student success over time is absolutely the most valuable tool 

that local administrators can provide to students, their parents and teachers. If the 

development and deployment of SLDS architecture continues from a ‘‘top-down’’ perspective without effective evidence of coordinated linkage of student data over time, 

then how can these efforts ever establish a definitive value-add for instruction? 

The Impact 

For the future of education, the importance of developing enterprise-based SLDS 

solutions is immense. It is the only way to address the issue of high student mobility that currently exists and will continue to increase. Our cohort-driven statistical 

analyses indicate that the nation may be missing the opportunity to effectively and 

appropriately educate a large segment of our country’s student population (i.e., the 

mobile students). Some of our findings indicate that mobile students fail academically and drop out of school at twice the rate as non-mobile students. Enterprisebased systems which can support the distribution of near real-time, high-value data 

that informs instruction are absolutely essential in addressing the mobility problems of America’s students. Our data indicates that, over a four year period, more 

than 50% of our secondary students are mobile. In some districts across the country, 

the numbers may be much higher. There is no solace to be gained—rather, great 

danger exists—when districts or states report that non-mobile students are succeeding academically while the plight of mobile children is ignored. 

The investment of millions of dollars in longitudinal data analysis should assist 

the USDOE and state educational agencies (SEAs) to become more accountable to 

the American public. However, there are other compelling reasons to use enterprisebased longitudinal data systems, such as establishing near real-time instructional 

need, and assisting in the delivery of timely instructional supports at the classroom 

level while creating and distributing student growth model analyses that validate 

instructional efforts. 

Suggested Actions 

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and most states have worked 

to create their own versions of learning standards. Attempts to update learning 

standards, whether at the federal or state levels, must continue as the scope of 

knowledge grows. As long as learning standards are modified and assessments are 

revised, there will always be a need to ‘‘bridge the gap’’ between the ‘‘old’’ and the 

‘‘new’’ standards. We cannot afford to rebuild our education system every time 

learning standards change. There is a critical need in education to establish a common language that simultaneously and definitively describes the scope (what we 

teach) and methodology (how we teach) of past, current, and proposed instructional 

efforts at every level. In successful, enterprise-based solutions within corporate envi-
28 

ronments, the establishment of a ‘‘common vocabulary’’ is recognized and highly valued. We must proactively establish flexible and definitive descriptors of what we 

will teach our students and then map this common vocabulary to all valued state 

and national standards of instruction. This process of ‘‘setting standards for standards’’ could greatly improve the flexibility, efficiency and effectiveness of America’s 

school systems, especially for mobile students. Such an effort in the basic core of 

curriculum needs to be, at a minimum, a PreK-16 effort to support the transition 

of students at all educational levels. 

In most successful companies within the corporate world, when a new vocabulary 

is introduced, it requires the development and adoption of new ‘‘business processes’’ 

that will provide new capacities to create, store, and use data more productively. 

These new business processes also require a review of data transmission at every 

level of functional operations. Since there currently is a heightened interest at the 

federal and state levels to collect academic performance data in the aggregate, and 

since there is an associated need for school districts/sites to develop academic performance measures at the student level, there should be a concerted effort to study 

and develop new ‘‘rules’’ for enterprise-based management of educational data. 

In summary, it must be noted that the deployment of effective enterprise-based, 

longitudinal data systems is not widely evident in America’s schools. Efforts to improve the transparency of the nation’s school systems are dependent on the establishment of enterprise-based longitudinal data systems. Furthermore, other issues 

such as quality control, performance-based pay, and professional development are 

dependent on the establishment of enterprise-based longitudinal data systems at 

every level of education, including the classroom and student levels. 

REFERENCE

Data Quality Campaign (DQC), 2010. 2009-10 Progress Report on State Data Systems and Use. Washington, DC: www.DataQualityCampaign.org 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Ms. Hartley, welcome. I think we are going to—are we passing 

the computer down, Ms.—watch out there, now. We are going to 

have water and coffee and computers all over the place. 

STATEMENT OF KATIE HARTLEY, M.ED., JUNIOR HIGH MATH 

TEACHER AND VALUE ADDED SPECIALIST, MIAMI EAST 

LOCAL SCHOOLS 

Ms. HARTLEY. Good morning. 

Chairman MILLER. Good morning. 

Ms. HARTLEY. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name 

is Katie Hartley and I teach—I currently teach middle school math 

at Miami East Local School in West Central Ohio. I am also the 

district’s value-added specialist, and I am also a regional valueadded specialist for the western region of Ohio. 

A nonprofit organization called Battelle for Kids brought this 

thing called value-added data to Ohio in 2002, and the superintendent we had at the time had the foresight to get us involved 

in the program. I was selected to be trained as a value-added specialist. 

And so as both—I am here today to speak to you both as a teacher who has used value-added data to inform decisions in my classroom and also as a value-added specialist who has worked with 

other groups of teachers to improve their practices. 

Value added data, at the very basic level, is a way to measure 

how much students grow in a year’s time. It is the data analysis 

that takes a student’s test history and test history of students like 

that child and they use all of this information to make a prediction 

for how a student should score on an assessment at the end of a 

school year. 
29 

And then we compare that prediction with how the child actually 

does, and the difference between how the child should score and 

how they actually score, then, is attributed to teacher-and schoollevel decisions. So in a way, it is a means to measure the effectiveness of a teacher and of a school. 

At Miami East, we have used these data, like I said, for the last 

8 years. We have used some with different groups of teachers. And 

I am very proud to say that for the last 2 years we have achieved 

the ‘‘excellent with distinction’’ rating from the state of Ohio, which 

is the highest level schools and districts can receive. 

You receive that rank by not only showing high achievement 

scores, graduation rates, attendance rates with our students, but 

also by showing positive growth scores, high value-added scores, for 

our students. 

I would like to go ahead and show you live some reports that we 

are able to use in Ohio. You can see from here that the EVOS report access has two different logins. There is the public-level access, which I am going to show you, and then there is an educator 

login. 

That is a role-based access. In other words, district leaders have 

access to district data. School leaders have access to school data. 

And teachers have access to teacher-level data. At this time in 

Ohio, parents do not have access to their individual child’s valueadded data on the state system. That is up to districts to decide 

how that is disseminated to parents. 

So we can scroll through every district in Ohio. And we can automatically see a report here, and this is for Miami schools’ reading 

value-added scores. It is a very basic evaluation of growth scores 

for students in our school district. 

The analysis starts in grade four, and the intuitive nature of the 

green, yellow, red—green obviously means that students in those 

grade levels in reading made more than a year’s growth. They had 

high value-added scores. Yellow would mean that they were close 

to making a year’s worth of growth. And then the red would be 

areas where students did not make a year’s worth of growth in that 

subject. 

And this is also historical. We can look at data from 2007, 2008 

and 2009. We can look at not just how did our students perform 

last year but how have they over time performed in this subject at 

this grade level. And then there is a 3-year average here. 

I can go back up here to the top, and I can choose, instead of 

reading, math. In Ohio, under the Ohio system, we only do valueadded measures at the state level for reading and math. Districts 

do have the option to be enrolled in a project called Project SCORE, 

which Miami is in, that gives additional value-added data for 

science and social studies. It also gives scores for third graders, 

which the state does not give, and then it also—we have a high 

school pilot. 

But we can see this is now math. We were looking at reading before. Now we are looking at some math value-added scores for 

Miami East, again by grade level and by year. So we can see that 

over time our fourth grade math students are doing a—making tremendous gains. 
30 

In fifth grade math, we have gone from a green to a yellow to 

a red, so as a fifth grade teacher or as a principal of that building, 

you know, we need to think about what are the—what has been 

happening in fifth grade math that has led to these changes over 

time. 

Sixth grade math, we are green. Then we drop down to yellow 

but jump back up to green. So we made some adjustments there. 

And so you can see from this, we can, as a school and as teachers, 

look at how our students have grown and make decisions about 

how we are teaching, what we are teaching, and what we can do 

differently to impact that. 

I unfortunately don’t have a visual for this, because it contains 

student-level data, but I would like to give an example—I taught 

fifth grade math. This was probably about 6 years ago. And one of 

the pieces of information that teachers receive is a disaggregated 

report—in other words, it tells us how we grew our top achieving 

kids and our bottom achieving kids and all kids in between. 

And what I saw in one of the reports that I got for students in 

my class was the fact that my high achieving students had very 

high growth scores and my low achieving students had very low 

growth scores, and that is obviously a big red flag. 

So as a teacher I had to examine what I was teaching, how I was 

teaching it, how I was assessing it, how I was addressing the needs 

of those lower achieving students, made some modifications, did 

some different things with assessment, instruction, brought in 

some volunteers, did some small group work, did some after school 

work with those students, and was able to use value-added scores 

from the following school year to measure whether or not those 

changes had been effective. 

Luckily, they were, and our low achieving students were able to 

make those gains that we wanted them to make and, in fact, across 

the board our middle and high achieving students also made positive growth gains based on that. 

And then one last thing I would like to show, which I think is 

important, is the ability that we have to look at students in particular teachers’ rooms. These are from last school year. These are 

sixth grade math reports. There were three different teachers in 

our district that taught sixth grade math. 

And just being able to look at the different strengths that teachers have—this is a report for Teacher A, and we can see that the— 

these are broken apart into low achieving students, middle achieving students and high achieving students. The green bar there in 

the middle would represent students at that level making a year’s 

worth of growth, making the—making it where they are predicted 

to make it. 

And we can see that Teacher A is helping her low and high 

achieving students to make a year’s growth, but luckily is taking 

her middle achieving students and taking them even further. Those 

children in the middle are scoring higher than they are predicted 

to score based on their test history and students like them in the 

past have scored. 

Teacher B has a different look. Teacher B is making positive 

growth with her lowest achieving students. The low achieving stu-
31 

dents in Teacher B’s class were making more than a year’s growth 

in a year’s time. 

Middle achieving students were making it where they were predicted to. And high achieving students were making it just a little 

bit lower than they were predicted to, and this is an important 

thing to examine. 

We often in schools—when we are measured on whether or not 

children pass a state test, then that tends to be the focus. And we 

sometimes forget those students at the high end who we know are 

very, very—they are gifted. They are very bright. They are going 

to pass the state test with little to no intervention from the school. 

We still need, as a school, to look at how we have grown those 

children, have we met their needs. And so if we look at Teacher 

A and Teacher B, they obviously have very different strengths. 

And this is a very important piece of information that then needs 

to be shared between these two teachers and the principal—you 

know, how is Teacher A working with students that is helping 

those middle achieving students make the gains that they are making, and how is Teacher B doing things that is helping those low 

achieving students make the gains that they are making. 

In other words, not all teachers have the same strengths, and if 

we can leverage the differences and the strengths that teachers 

have and use that in a forum together to discuss how we are teaching, that is the real power of using value-added data. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Hartley follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Katie Hartley, Teacher, Value Added Data 

Specialist, Miami East Local Schools, Miami County, OH 

Hello Chairman Miller, Ranking member Kline and Members of the Committee: 

Good morning, my name is Katie Hartley and I am a teacher and value added data 

specialist for Miami East Local Schools in Miami County, Ohio. I’m here today to 

talk to you about how I have used value added and achievement data in my classroom and with other groups of teachers to make decisions about curriculum and instruction. 

Battelle for Kids, a nonprofit organization, brought value added data analysis to 

schools in Ohio in 2002, and Miami East was one of the first school districts in the 

state to begin to use this kind of information. Value added data models use a student’s individual test history, along with historical data of other students to predict 

each student’s performance. Each student’s actual performance is then compared to 

their predicted performance to find a value added score. The difference between a 

student’s predicted performance and actual performance (positive or negative) is attributed to the school and/or teacher. This value added measurement allows schools 

and teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of current enacted curriculum and instructional practices. 

Over the past eight years I have used these value added scores from students in 

my classes to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of my teaching, made changes 

accordingly, and made judgments about these changes with value added scores from 

subsequent tests. For example, when low achieving students in my fifth grade math 

class received lower value added scores than high achieving students in the same 

class, I had to examine what skills I was teaching in that class, how I was teaching 

those skills, and how I was measuring students’ understanding and mastery of the 

skills. I had to decide what I was doing in my classroom that was allowing high 

achieving students to score even higher than predicted, but was keeping my low 

achieving students from scoring where they were predicted. I decided to keep the 

curriculum the same since I was teaching all the skills and knowledge that the Ohio 

Department of Education put forth for fifth graders in math, but decided to change 

some of my instructional and evaluation techniques. I incorporated more cooperative 

learning opportunities for students to work together, more hands on activities for 

students, more games that practiced essential skills, and also arranged for many 

low achieving students to have additional help with their math work either from 
32 

a volunteer or myself. When the value added scores came out the following year, 

students at all achievement levels (high, middle and low-achieving students) had 

much higher value added scores than the year before. Without the value added 

scores for students in my classes, I would not have known I needed to make these 

changes, nor would I have had a means to measure the effectiveness of the changes 

I made in my teaching. Without a longitudinal data system with the ability to link 

student scores over time, this information would not have been available. In other 

words, I would not be as effective a teacher without these data, and without the 

support of my local and state agencies. Dr. Todd Rappold, my district superintendent, and Dr. Deborah Delisle, state superintendent, both believe strongly in 

the use of data to inform educational decisions, and in giving educators the tools 

they need to do this effectively and successfully. 

I have also worked with all teachers at Miami East Schools on the use of value 

added and achievement data to make decisions, and plan for instruction for each 

school year. Our ability to look at student level data both for achievement and value 

added scores has allowed us to make many improvements in teaching and learning 

in our schools. Miami East has received the top rating the state of Ohio gives school 

districts, ‘Excellent with Distinction’ two years in a row. This rating is reserved for 

school districts that not only have high achievement scores, high graduation and attendance rates, but also have at least two consecutive years of positive value added 

scores. The staff at Miami East has demonstrated a dedication to using data to improve instruction, and our students have benefited from this work. The quality of 

the education students at Miami East receive is directly correlated to their access 

to longitudinal student level data, professional development time and resources 

around the use of value added data to inform instruction, and the leadership and 

support of the state superintendent, the district superintendent, and the district 

value added specialist. A quality education for Miami East students is made possible by quality student level data. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Reidenberg? Am I pronouncing your 

name correctly? 

STATEMENT OF JOEL R. REIDENBERG, J.D., PROFESSOR OF 

LAW AND DIRECTOR OF CENTER ON LAW AND INFORMATION POLICY, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW 

Mr. REIDENBERG. Reidenberg. 

Chairman MILLER. Reidenberg. My apologies. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very 

much to you and to the distinguished members of the committee 

for inviting me to testify this morning. 

It is really an honor and a privilege to be able to address the important privacy issues associated with databases of children’s educational records. 

My testimony this morning is going to draw on the Fordham 

study that the ranking member introduced a few minutes ago that 

I co-directed along with my colleague Jamela Debelak, who is here 

with me, from Fordham. 

I am testifying today, though, as an academic expert and I am 

not representing the views of any organization. What I would like 

to do in this oral part is to summarize the written statement I have 

provided to the committee for the record. 

My research in this area on K through 12 educational record 

databases began in October of 2006. At the time I was serving as 

an elected member of the Board of Education in Millburn, New Jersey—Millburn Township in New Jersey. So I was very sensitive to 

how we measured the performance of our schools, the performance 

of our teachers. 

But as a board member, I heard a speech by the commissioner 

of education at the time extolling the roll-out of the New Jersey 
33 

SMART data warehouse—that is what New Jersey calls it. And 

this was a database that was to contain very detailed identifiable 

information on our district’s children that we, as a school district, 

were going to be required to report to the state. 

And in listening to the commissioner speak, I was struck that 

there seemed to be almost no thought given to the privacy considerations. There seemed to be no thought given to whether the data 

was necessary for an educational evaluation purpose, whether 

there were access or use restrictions on the data that the state was 

collecting from us. There were no data retention policies associated 

with the data that the state was collecting. 

As a board member, I felt as though I was in a position of knowing that my district was about to violate FERPA in sending this 

information to the state. 

I was troubled that the data warehouse was established without 

public transparency. It was a surprise to all of us. And then as an 

academic, I started to look into the program and saw that it was 

part of a national trend driven by No Child Left Behind, recently 

reinforced by the stimulus bill. 

And I went back to Fordham and set out with a research team 

to try to learn what was existing across the country. And let me 

stress that our study and I do not challenge the importance and 

the legitimacy of data collection and the use of data to inform the 

educational decisions that we just heard about, and to make assessments of performance. 

But rather, what I seek to do is highlight the critical need for 

policy makers to address publicly and to incorporate privacy rules 

in the planning and development of these systems. 

I would like to make three points from the Fordham study. The 

first is that states are warehousing children’s sensitive personal information at the state level. Our study found that most states have 

established state-wide databases of children’s information. 

Typically, it was in identifiable form at the state level, because 

very few of the states have firewalls that would effectively separate 

the children’s identity from the state officials who would have access to or be maintaining the databases. 

Approximately one-third of the states are using Social Security 

numbers as the identifier for children at the state-level database. 

For a disturbing number of states—and I can cite states like Alabama, Arizona, Maryland, Nevada, Oklahoma—key information on 

the data warehousing programs, such as the types of data being 

collected, were simply not publicly available. 

Our team of researchers—we had eight graduate students looking at this, trying to find it—weren’t able to find the information. 

It means that state governments are conducting major data processing operations essentially in secret from parents and from the 

public at large. 

We found that sensitive data is collected, certainly, for NCLB reporting obligations, things like test scores, race, disability status. 

But we also found that other data was commonly collected that 

didn’t appear to be for NCLB reporting purposes and didn’t appear 

on its face to be associated with core educational assessment purposes. 
34 

So for example, 22 percent of the states were collecting at the 

state level, in—often in identifiable form, whether particular students were pregnant when they were in school. Forty-six percent 

of the states were collecting mental health illness information, 

whether students had been jailed. 

Louisiana requires the state—the school districts to report to the 

state level by Social Security number whether students use foul 

language in class. 

Data seems to be collected for other goals that—like delivery of 

social services. So for example, there are states that collect the 

birth weight of a teenage mother’s baby. So it is important for social services purposes, but the question that we pose is is it necessary for that to be part of an educational record in identifiable 

form at the state level. 

We found that the United States Department of Education was 

promoting interoperable standards. Interoperable standards are 

important and valuable for the efficiency and the efficacy of the 

data collection, but it also means that creating a national database 

of schoolchildren becomes a turnkey operation, particularly if little 

attention is paid to privacy in the construction of the databases. 

The second point that I would like to raise is the Fordham study 

documented that basic privacy protections were lacking, and rules 

need to be implemented to assure children’s data is adequately protected. 

The lack of transparency for the data warehouses was deeply 

troubling, and our research team had significant difficulty and was 

unable to find publicly available information on what the data 

being collected by the states was. 

That means for parents, there are secret surveillance systems of 

their children. For the public, it means that state governments 

aren’t accountable because the public doesn’t know what they are 

doing. 

We found most states did not have detailed access and use restrictions on the data held by the state. Most states did not require 

database users to enter into confidentiality agreements. Most 

states did not have data retention policies. 

And it is very significant, because that means when states collect 

information on discipline, children’s interaction with the juvenile 

justice system in particular, the juvenile justice system seals those 

records, often expunges those records when the child reaches 18. 

The state educational databases do not. There is no data retention 

requirement. There is no expungement. There is no seal. We found 

this to be both surprising and troubling. 

Most states are using identifiable children’s information at the 

state level. Do they really need to know the identity of particular 

children? Anonymous information proves to be very difficult, to actually make the data anonymous. 

We heard the example from Colorado. The data is anonymous, 

yes, but deleting names, creating new I.D.s, isn’t sufficient. Computer science techniques today make it very easy to re-identify 

data. If you can look at clusters and cross matching and cross referencing clusters, it becomes very simple to re-identify from purportedly anonymous information. That is a very significant finding 

that we saw in the data. 
35 

And lastly, we found that just the sheer scope of data collection 

reflects that states do not seem to be worrying about the very basic 

privacy principle of data minimization—in other words, that data 

collections not just be fishing expeditions because we think the 

data at a point in the future will be useful. 

The third point that I would like to raise from the Fordham 

study is that strong security is necessary to minimize the risks of 

data invasions, scandals and meltdowns. We are talking about centralized warehouses of children’s personal information. That is a 

target. 

Data security measures won’t address some of the essential policy decisions for privacy, like use restrictions, like data minimization or retention periods. But what they do do—they play a critical 

role in implementing the protection to prevent unauthorized access, 

to prevent unauthorized use, and to prevent disclosures. 

It is inevitable that children’s information will be compromised 

from these central databases. Just look at the financial services 

sector and how, in the banking industry, we have seen the number 

of data leaks. 

In the education sphere, from state databases we already had the 

experience of Nashville, Tennessee. About a year ago, all of the 

educational information on public schoolchildren in the city of 

Nashville and 6,000 parents were disclosed on the Internet, freely 

available on the Internet, because it was not properly secured. 

Data loss will occur. A hundred thousand students and teachers 

in Greenville, North Carolina had their information lost when a 

laptop was stolen. Data spying and voyeurs and predators will go 

after the information. So we have to be very careful how we secure 

it. 

Importantly, states should avoid storing identifiable information. 

That is the best—one of the best protections. State-of-the-art 

encryption is necessary. Access controls, use restrictions, need to be 

implemented. 

And like the Internal Revenue Service, audit logs that indicate 

when problems are there, misuse is there, intrusions have occurred 

ought to be kept. 

Let me conclude by recommending three steps that Congress can 

take to protect children. As a condition of continued federal funding 

of state warehouses of children’s information, I think Congress 

should first require that states articulate through statute or regulation the justification for the collection of each element of identifiable information. This assures that legitimate uses are transparent 

and sufficiently compelling to warrant the privacy tradeoffs. 

Second, require that states define specific data retention periods 

that are clearly linked to the specific purpose for which the data 

is originally collected. This minimizes the risk of data spills, protects against mission creep. 

And lastly, that states be required to adopt an oversight mechanism for the collection and use of children’s educational data. We 

have seen this in the Department of Homeland Security. Congress 

required DHS to have a chief privacy officer. Congress has required 

the Department of Justice to have a chief privacy officer. This 

model provides for transparency to the public and oversight for 

compliance with privacy requirements. 
36 

Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Reidenberg follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Joel R. Reidenberg, Professor of Law and Founding 

Academic Director, Center on Law and Information Policy, Fordham University School of Law 

Good morning Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and distinguished members of 

the Committee. I would like to thank you for the invitation to testify today and to 

commend you for recognizing the importance of privacy protections in the development of databases of children’s educational records. 

My name is Joel Reidenberg. I am a Professor of Law and the Academic Director 

of the Center on Law and Information Policy (‘‘CLIP’’) at the Fordham University 

School of Law. As an academic, I have written and lectured extensively on data privacy law and policy. Of relevance to today’s hearing, I directed with Jamela 

Debelak, CLIP’s Executive Director, the CLIP report ‘‘Children’s Educational 

Records and Privacy: A Study of Elementary and Secondary School State Reporting 

Systems’’ (Oct. 28, 2009), http://law.fordham.edu/childrensprivacy. I am a former 

chair of the Association of American Law School’s Section on Defamation and Privacy and have served as an expert adviser on data privacy issues for the Federal 

Trade Commission, the European Commission and during the 103rd and 104th Congresses for the Office of Technology Assessment. I have also served as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Washington in connection with privacy litigation. In appearing today, I am testifying as an academic expert and my views 

should not be attributed to any organization with which I am affiliated. 

My testimony today draws on the Fordham study and I would like to make three 

points directly from it: 

1. States are warehousing sensitive information about identifiable children. 

2. The Fordham CLIP study documents that privacy protections are lacking and 

rules need to be developed and implemented to assure that children’s educational 

records are adequately protected. 

3. As part of basic privacy standards, strong data security is necessary to minimize the risks of data invasions, scandals and melt-downs from centralized databases of children’s personal information. 

My research focus on the treatment of K-12 educational records began in October 

2006. As an elected member of the Millburn Township Board of Education in New 

Jeresey, I heard a speech by the state commissioner of education extolling the rollout of the NJ SMART data warehouse later that fall. The NJ SMART program required our district to provide detailed, sensitive information about our school children on an identifiable basis to the state’s central database. None of the commissioner’s plans indicated any effort to focus data collection on truly necessary information, nor did they reflect any limitation on the purposes for use of the data once 

collected, nor did the plans appear to have any means for parents to check the accuracy of state-held information, and nor did the plans have any limitations on the 

length of storage. The only recognition that privacy might be affected by NJ SMART 

was an architecture that included data security mechanisms. As a Board member, 

I was disturbed that the state had given our district a mandate that would invade 

our children’s privacy for ill-defined purposes in a way that appeared to put the district in clear violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (‘‘FERPA’’). 

I was equally troubled that this database was established without public transparency and debate on the policy ramifications for children’s privacy. Our Board and 

others we asked had not even heard about the program. 

In delving further into the New Jersey program, it became apparent that New 

Jersey was part of a national trend to create state data warehouses of children’s 

educational records driven by No Child Left Behind and more recently expanded by 

the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009. The national trend similarly had emerged without public debate regarding privacy. As a result, we launched 

the Fordham CLIP study to determine what existed across the country at the state 

level, to assess whether states were protecting the privacy of the children’s information in these databases and to make best practices and legislative reform recommendations as appropriate. 

At the outset, I would like to stress that our study and I do not challenge the 

importance and legitimacy of data collection and use to better inform educational 

outcomes. Rather, I seek to highlight the critical need for policy makers to incorporate privacy rules in the planning and implementation of these systems so that 

the important and legitimate goals of educational accountability do not undermine 

privacy and so that the important and legitimate privacy concerns do not pose unnecessary obstacles to educational accountability. 
37 

1. States are warehousing children’s sensitive personal information 

The Fordham study found that most states have established state-wide databases 

of children’s educational records. The information held at the state level is typically 

identified or identifiable to individual children because the databases use unique 

identifiers for each child and very few states use systems that establish a firewall 

to keep the identity of individual students known only at the local level. One-third 

of the states track students through their social security numbers. In other words, 

most states are developing systems that centralize at the state level each individual 

child’s information rather than transferring data aggregated by cohorts to the state 

level. 

For a disturbing number of states such as Alabama, Arizona, Maryland, Nevada 

and Oklahoma, key information on the data warehouse programs including the 

types of data that were being collected and used were not publicly available. This 

means that state governments are conducting major data processing operations involving children’s sensitive information essentially in secret from parents. 

In states where information was publicly available on the data warehouse programs, the Fordham study found that states were collecting children’s personal information to comply with NCLB reporting obligations such as test scores, race, ethnicity, gender, and disability status. However, the states were also collecting sensitive information well beyond NCLB reporting requirements. The following table 

gives some examples of the sensitive data collected by states. 

Many additional data elements included in the state databases do not appear to 

be collected for NCLB reporting purpose nor for core educational assessment purposes. Louisiana schools, for example, must report to the state the social security 

number of each child who is disciplined for the use of foul language in school. 

Data warehouses appear to gather data for other goals like the delivery of social 

services. For example, Florida uses social security numbers to collect information 

about its K-12 children and collects the birth weight of a teenage mother’s baby. 

While the birth weight of a teenage mother’s baby can be valuable information to 

anticipate social service needs, the decision to include this information as part of 

an educational record at the state level permanently linked to the teenager and the 

baby raises many privacy risks that need to be justified and balanced against the 

actual benefits for the mother and child. The following table illustrates some of 

these types of data found in the state data warehouses. 
38 

In developing data warehouses, the U.S. Department of Education has encouraged 

the use of interoperable data standards. Organizations, such as the Data Quality 

Campaign and the Standards Interoperability Framework Association, have significantly advanced the development of common data protocols. These common protocols 

are valuable to improve the efficiency of data collection and use. But, the use of 

interoperable data standards across state lines also means that the creation of a national database of children becomes a turn-key operation. Until the recent efforts 

of the Data Quality Campaign, basic privacy protections were not included as key 

components of the work on common data standards. 

2. The lack of privacy protection 

The Fordham study showed that the state data warehouses of children’s information typically lacked basic privacy protections and, often, were not in compliance 

with FERPA. 

As a starting point, the states’ lack of transparency for these databases is deeply 

troubling. Our research team had significant difficulty and was unable to find publicly available information on the data collected by many states. As far as parents 

are concerned, this means that state governments have created secret surveillance 

systems for their children. The non-transparent nature of these systems also means 

that state government can avoid public accountability for its treatment of children’s 

personal information. 

The technical architectures generally did not adequately seek to de-identify children’s information at the state level. To the extent that outcome assessment can effectively be accomplished by examining cohorts at the state level, rather than individual children, there is no need for the state educational agency to have individual 

student records. The use of truly anonymous information would avoid privacy 

issues. However, we did not systematically see careful attention to architectures 

that established identity firewalls. Professors Krish Muralidhar and Rathindra 

Sarathy have demonstrated that re-identification of specific children from purport-
39 

1Krish Muralidhar & Rathindra Sarathy, ‘‘Privacy Violations in Accountability Data Released 

to the Public by State Educational Agencies,’’ paper presented to the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology Research Conference, Washington DC, November 2-4, 2009 available at: 

http://gatton.uky.edu/faculty/muralidhar/EdPrivacyViolation.pdf (last visited Apr. 9, 2010). 

edly anonymous student information is already a problem in the context of public 

reporting on school performance.1

Data minimization, a basic privacy principle that collections of personal information should not be conducted as general fishing expeditions, is absent as a guiding 

policy for the state warehouses. The scope of sensitive children’s information that 

is collected by states appears to be excessive with respect to the context and core 

educational purposes of the databases. 

The state data warehouses generally did not have clear legal limitations on the 

purpose for which data could be accessed and used. Without purpose limitations, 

states, such as New Jersey, are in facial violation of FERPA. FERPA only permits 

local schools to report data to state agencies in identifiable format for ‘‘audit and 

evaluation’’ purposes. The lack of purpose limitations strongly suggests that states 

will begin a mission creep and use children’s educational data for a multiplicity of 

purposes unrelated to assuring the educational performance of the state’s schools. 

Most states also did not explicitly require state officials to agree to confidentiality 

before accessing student information. 

The states by and large ignore data retention policies. The lack of storage limits 

means that a child’s third grade peccadillo and youthful indiscretions will indeed become a ‘‘permanent record’’ since states store detailed disciplinary and social information, including in some instances if a child was the victim of bullying. The lack 

of storage limitations is a facial violation of FERPA as FERPA requires that data 

transferred to state authorities for audit and evaluation purposes not be retained 

longer than necessary to accomplish those permissible purposes. The lack of 

durational limits also undermines other important public policies. For example, the 

detailed disciplinary information collected on identified students, including involvement and convictions under the juvenile justice system will be held indefinitely as 

part of the ‘‘educational records’’ database. While the juvenile records are typically 

sealed and may be expunged when a minor reaches adulthood, the state’s educational database without a data retention policy does not provide any such protection. 

Many states outsource the data processing services for their data warehouses. 

While security and confidentiality provisions can be found in some of these contracts, the clauses are typically very circumspect with respect to the vendor’s obligations. Vendor contracts are generally silent with respect to uses and retention of 

data by the vendor. 

The Fordham CLIP study identified key privacy protections that need to be implemented for children’s educational record databases: 

• States should implement a technical architecture to prevent access to identifiable information beyond the school officials who need to know 

• States that outsource data processing should have comprehensive agreements 

that explicitly address privacy 

• States should limit data collection to necessary information for articulated, defined purposes 

• States should have specific data retention policies and procedures 

• States should explicitly provide for limited access and use of the children’s data 

• States should provide public notice of state data processing of children’s information 

3. Strong data security is necessary to minimize the risks of data invasions, scandals 

and melt-downs from centralized databases of children’s personal information 

In addition to basic privacy protections, data security is critical when information 

relating to identifiable children is centralized at the state level. Data security measures do not address the essential policy decisions for privacy protections like data 

minimization, purpose limitations, and defined storage periods. But, data security 

measures play a critical role in the implementation of privacy protections specifically with respect to the prevention of unauthorized access, use and disclosure of 

personal information. 

The centralization of children’s information at the state level increases the risks 

and scope of loss from security incidents. The centralization means that data security breaches will be on a larger scale than if data were held solely at the local level. 

For example, according to the Congressional Research Service up to 1.4 million residents of Colorado had their names, social security numbers and birth dates com-
40 

2 CRS Report for Congress, Data Security Breaches: Context and Incident Summary, p. 62 

(May 7, 2007) available at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33199.pdf 

promised when a database from the state department of human services was stolen 

from a private contractor in Texas.2

It is inevitable that security of the children’s information will be compromised. 

The experiences in the financial services sector that have been revealed by data security breach notification laws reflect the magnitude of this risk. Despite the deployment of significant resources and the economic incentive for banks to avoid liability, 

the number of compromised credit cards in the United States is staggering. The 

Heartland Payment Systems breach alone in 2009 involved more than 100 million 

credit and debit card transactions. State departments of education have neither the 

resources nor the same high level of incentive to protect children’s information to 

the degree that the financial services sector does. 

The substantial security risks to children’s educational records in data warehouses can be illustrated by a few examples: 

• Data spills occur when school or state officials fail to assure adequate access 

controls and encryption for student records 

• Hackers gain access to data when it is insufficiently protected 

• Data loss and theft compromise educational records when they are insufficiently 

protected 

• Data spys and voyeurs who are internal employees with access privileges abuse 

their access to personal information for personal gain 
41 

Strong data security for children’s educational records is, thus, essential. Four 

critical features for a strong security system are: 

• States should avoid the storage of identifiable information whenever possible. 

• States should use state-of-the art encryption to protect children’s data 

• States should have robust access control and use authorization policies in place 

• States should, like the IRS, maintain audit logs that track system use to detect 

intrusions and police internal misuse 

Conclusion 

The Fordham CLIP Study recommends several measures that I believe Congress 

should consider as a condition of continued federal funding of state data warehouses 

of children’s information: 

1. Require that states articulate through statute or regulation the justification for 

the collection of each element of identifiable information. This assures that the legitimate uses are transparent and sufficiently compelling to warrant the privacy 

trade-offs. 

2. Require that states define specific data retention limitations that are clearly 

linked to the specific purposes for which the data is originally collected. This reduces the risks of data spills, protects against mission creep, and 

3. Require that states adopt an oversight mechanism for the collection and use 

of children’s educational data. A Chief Privacy Officer in the state departments of 

education would, like the CPOs in the federal Department of Homeland Security 

and Department of Justice, provide transparency to the public and oversight for 

compliance with privacy requirements. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

And thank you to all of you for your testimonies. 

Ms. Hartley, I am going to start with you, and then if maybe Mr. 

Kitchens and Mr. Wenning can respond to the question, but I think 

it—you showed us Teacher A and B, and the—as we look forward 

to a more collaborative workplace and school site, and hopefully between best practices between schools and what a district’s goals 

are, when we look at that information on how a particular teacher 

was doing in math or reading with low achieving, high achieving, 

incomes, students—however you mix them—the next logical step, 

it would seem to me, is not only to be sharing that information and 

the ability of teachers to assess how they are doing, but also what 

other teachers are doing, and then hopefully having a principal, an 

academic principal, that is prepared to see how he—how you can 

then share that information. 

Is that, in fact, being done? Because again, it is an interesting 

graph, but if it is then not utilized—and what is the ability and the 

time constraints of others on utilizing that data to the benefit of 

the—of those teachers and, clearly, of the students, if you could 

transfer those talents across the students that they are responsible 

for? 

Ms. HARTLEY. That is a great question. It is being done. It is 

being done in my school district. Each grade level and department, 

grades kindergarten through 12, are—meet regularly to write what 

we call action plans on a yearly basis, and those action plans are 

based on data. 

Action plans, while they are written as a grade level or as a department, are largely based on value-added scores that we have 

seen. 

So those are real graphs that Teacher A and Teacher B really 

looked at in the fall of this school year and really had some conversations about their instructional practices, their assessment 

techniques, and in some ways the grouping of students, how we 
42 

place students in specific classes, how we—you know, how do we 

group students. 

And some decisions were made based on those graphs, and we 

are hoping that the result of that, then, will be that the strengths 

that Teacher A brought to the table and the strengths that Teacher 

B brought to the table will become both of their strengths. 

Chairman MILLER. If I can just add to that, and then I am going 

to—I am going to go to Mr. Kitchens and Mr. Wenning, the question also, then—how is that tool not just the collaboration between 

those teachers but in terms of further professional development— 

how is that information used? 

Yes. 

Ms. HARTLEY. Okay. 

Chairman MILLER. Just quickly you, and then—— 

Ms. HARTLEY. Okay. As a building or a district leader, you would 

definitely want to know that information. And as the instructional 

leader of a building, the principal’s responsibility is to ensure the 

best education possible for every child in that building. 

While it is not necessarily being done, I would like to see individual professional development efforts be made to teachers based 

on some of the information that we have had there. 

For example, if, you know, Teacher A was not necessarily making 

the growth—their low and high achieving students were making an 

average year’s worth of growth, which is great, so Teacher A should 

really be focusing on professional development that will target 

some of their higher achieving students. 

And I know for a fact that Teacher A is actually working with 

a gifted specialist this year on what she can do in her classroom 

to engage those students and bring out the growth measures that 

they would like to see from those students. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Kitchens? 

Mr. KITCHENS. Sure. One of the things that we like to do with 

our network is create professional learning communities in our district. And that is to say how would we unite all of the fifth grade 

teachers of the district so that they could share knowledge of how 

well their children were performing as a group district-wide, or 

how well they were performing in a site. 

So in every school site of our district, we have organized our 

teachers into professional learning communities. And we have instructional leaders in the schools. 

And I am very proud to tell you, you know, we pay our teachers 

extra duty to observe as leaders in the professional learning community, and—much like we pay our coaches for athletic extra duties, and it is very important to us to establish dialogue, because 

collaboration is the key. 

And using the data and knowing and understanding where our 

students need assistance is our number one priority in establishing 

that professional learning community within the school district and 

within the school sites to focus on the areas that we—— 

Chairman MILLER. But does the data allow you to segment those 

learning communities so, again—— 

Mr. KITCHENS. Yes. 
43 

Chairman MILLER [continuing]. If the teacher is doing well in 

reading—assuming they have multiple responsibilities—— 

Mr. KITCHENS. That is right. 

Chairman MILLER [continuing]. If they are doing well in reading, 

you can segment them because of the data to work with a group 

of math—— 

Mr. KITCHENS. Yes. 

Chairman MILLER [continuing]. Instructors. 

Mr. KITCHENS. Yes, absolutely, and we see that as a key and— 

to foster that communication and action plan. We ask each school 

and site to foster or develop an action plan related to the data, and 

that action plan is the business of the PLC. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Wenning? 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And the question cuts 

to the heart of the purpose of this data, and that is to connect student results to specific instructional resources for that student, for 

those educators, and professional development for them. 

In Colorado we have a very large state, very expansive with a 

lot of rural districts, and one of the keys is allowing that kind of 

collaboration among educators about results and instructional resources to happen state-wide so that our educators connected—that 

are in our rural areas have access to our educators that are in our 

urban areas, and that the instructional resources are actually 

shared across the state because of this information we have at the 

student level that is available only to educators with a right to it. 

But then at a broader level, just connecting strengths or weaknesses in students more broadly to specific strategies, to professional development paths, and allowing collaboration through our 

new tools across the state is a real key attribute of this longitudinal data. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Kline? 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And again, thanks to the witnesses. I apologize for being absent 

for a bit. It is the crazy way we do business here, where we scoot 

back and forth between different committee hearings. 

I will confess that I captured some of the testimony via screen. 

It is another magical piece of technology and very useful. 

I had a meeting with about 20 school superintendents in my district just during the Easter break, talking about No Child Left Behind, and Elementary and Secondary Act reauthorization, and Race 

to the Top, and blueprints, and all of those things, a wonderful, 

wonderful round-table discussion. 

And one of the things that the superintendents did express was 

it would be great if we had data and a common system so that we 

could share this information, and we could track student progress, 

teacher performance and all of those things that we have been talking about. 

I say that just to emphasize that I am really keenly aware of the 

value and the importance of this kind of data. But as I said in my 

opening statement, I am very, very concerned about the potential 

abuse of this data. So I am going to go to Professor Reidenberg, if 

I could. 
44 

I did listen to your testimony, and you were citing some pretty 

scary things, frankly, and your example of the justice system seals 

a minor’s record and it becomes invisible to everybody, but potentially in a student education database that misconduct as a student 

would be available forever—so I am, if anything, even more 

alarmed after seeing the results of the Fordham study and your 

testimony. 

I was struck by some of the information that seems to be captured in these databases. For example, the birth weight of a student’s baby, the student’s birth order, information that doesn’t 

seem to have anything to do with a student’s progress. Do you have 

any—did your study reveal or do you have any opinion on why this 

information is collected and what it could be used for? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. We found the information by going through 

the—what are known as the data dictionaries. These are the coding 

books that the local schools will use to report data to the states. 

So we will see different codes for various—describing data elements. 

And that is where it comes up. We didn’t find any statements explaining why that—those particular data points were collected. I 

have had some conversations I can answer separate from the study. 

Birth weight of a teenage mother’s baby is important for a variety 

of social services, health services, for the baby and often the mother that, in some states, they believe that is important to be provided as part of the educational package so that that mother can 

succeed in school. 

I think what that reflects, though, is it is a mission creep. It is 

using the educational record database for lots of uses beyond the 

straight educational tracking system that one would usually associate it with. It also tends to be a surprise that they are collecting 

that. 

New Jersey, my state, collects information—asks schools to report who the students’ health insurance carrier is. They want to 

know certain medical test results as part of the state database on 

an identifiable basis. 

Mr. KLINE. Mr. Wenning, is Colorado collecting that sort of information? Is that in the database, the student’s child’s birth weight, 

and order of birth, and financial status, income of the parents? Is 

that in your database? 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, that is not in our 

educational data warehouse. 

Mr. KLINE. Anywhere. 

Mr. WENNING. Not in education. I don’t know—— 

Mr. KLINE. No, no, I am talking about in—— 

Mr. WENNING. But in our educational data warehouse, no, we 

don’t have information on birth weight and, really, everything we 

collect has been specified in statute or rule, and it is—the concerns 

raised are important. 

But no, the most important thing is we know what the data is 

going to be used for, and there is actually a use case for it. There 

is a major shift going on between state agencies moving towards 

compliance entities to entities that are trying to provide service 

and support to the field. And I think we are catching up with that 

at this point. 
45 

Some of this data may very well have been collected for old purposes that are no longer relevant. But no, not in Colorado. We don’t 

collect information on birth weight and put that in our state education data warehouse. 

Mr. KLINE. I am heartened. That is good. Thank you. 

Again, Professor Reidenberg, it looks like the way some of this 

data is collected and used—and clearly, it does seem to me that 

there is an intent here to share student data with post-secondary 

education, and it seems that that might have some value. 

But it also looks like some of this may be just flatly in violation 

of the law, the—of FERPA. Did you address that at all? I missed 

that in your testimony. Are there instances here where some states 

are just clearly violating the law? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. I addressed it more in my written statement, 

but the answer to that is yes. We found in our reviews of the state 

programs that in instances where states, for example, did not have 

purpose limitations on the data, in my judgment it is a violation 

of FERPA for the local school district to give the state identifiable 

data. 

The school district is permitted to give the state educational authorities identifiable data for audit and evaluation purposes. Unless there is some restriction, the state can use that data for other 

reasons. The local school district isn’t permitted to give it to the 

state. 

We found cases we obtained through Freedom of Information Act 

requests—copies of vendor agreements between state departments 

of education and their third-party vendors doing the data processing, and we found agreements such as the one in New Jersey 

that is not under the control of the department of education. That 

is a violation of FERPA. 

We found in most instances, the vendor agreements were silent 

or said very little about privacy and how they were going to be 

treating the data. I think there are—was evidence that some of 

those agreements were not in compliance with FERPA. 

Mr. KLINE. Okay. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It seems to me as we go forward with 

this, we really are going to have to pay attention to how the statute 

comes out and be mindful. It is, frankly, alarming to me that some 

of that information is out there and too easily accessible. 

And I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Scott? 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Reidenberg, the information that is gathered on students— 

is the information gathered in such a way that the data conforms 

across state and—across the state and across the nation so that 

you can compare what is going on with one data set in Virginia and 

one in California? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. What we focused on were the particular data 

elements that were being collected, as opposed to, for example, 

looking at is this type of school across state lines matching. So I 

won’t speak to that. 

What I will speak—— 
46 

Mr. SCOTT. I mean, is the data in conformity so that the data in 

Virginia is the same data that is collected in California? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. It depends. Some of the states—there are 

groups of states that are using the same data protocols, so the— 

the SIF organization has one common data dictionary. So if the 

state is using the same data dictionary, the answer to that is yes, 

they are using the same codes to report the same kinds of information. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, one of the data points involves students who do 

not take the test. It includes dropouts. This is student-specific. One 

of the problems we have had with counting dropouts is actually 

counting them, and there are different mathematical formulas. 

If you have student-specific data, will the dropout calculation be 

easy to ascertain? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. Probably much easier than today, but what we 

looked at was not just the state reporting—the local district reporting that a student has dropped out, but their reporting the particular reason that a student has dropped out. 

So some of the reasons may be—and I am looking—these are the 

disciplinary codes. The actual specific disciplinary codes will report 

criminal damage to property, misappropriation with violence to the 

person, possessed a pocket knife with a blade of less than two-anda-half inches. I mean, that is the kind of detail that is being reported to the—— 

Mr. SCOTT. And so you could actually show that somebody subjected to a simple-minded zero tolerance ended up dropping out and 

on an aggregate basis some of these policies can become counterproductive, so the reason can be extremely helpful. 

Will there be information like an uptick in absences or drop in 

grade where you can show a student all of a sudden got into some 

trouble and might need intervention? Will that information be 

available? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. It could be. It would depend on the nature of 

the trouble the student got into and whether it triggers one of the 

reporting requirements. We were not—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Would the school have that information? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. I am sorry? 

Mr. SCOTT. Would the school have that information? 

Ms. Hartley, if a school had information that a student—student’s grades dropped or has significant increase in absences, is 

that information that would be useful to the teacher? 

Ms. HARTLEY. Oh, absolutely. You know, as a classroom teacher, 

I can tell you there is a direct correlation between student attendance and student achievement. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. 

Ms. HARTLEY. Students that are there on a consistent basis do 

better. When they are not there, it is a very difficult process to 

catch them up on instruction they have missed, fill in assessment 

pieces and—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, you showed that the data can be aimed at—per 

teacher and the different assessments for the teacher. One of the 

problems—and I know in tennis, half your skill in doubles is picking your partner. 
47 

You want to avoid a situation where the teacher starts picking 

students and a teacher may be unwilling to take on a slower student because it is going to mess up the average. 

Can this be done in such a way that you can not discourage 

the—a teacher from going across the hall and saying, ‘‘Well, let me 

try young Johnny, you are not having much success with him?’’ 

Ms. HARTLEY. Gosh, I don’t work in a district where teachers are 

allowed to choose students. I mean, that is something that is done 

at the administrative level. I can’t speak to how it is done in other 

districts. 

What I can say is that the exciting thing about value-added data 

and actually measuring a student’s growth is that you—teachers no 

longer necessarily want to avoid those lower achieving students. If 

we are going to be looking at how we have grown students, as opposed to whether or not they pass or test—pass or fail a state 

test—those low achieving students have a much lower likelihood of 

passing the test. 

If we can show growth with those students and, you know, feel 

good about that and be recognized for that growth, as opposed to 

whether or not they passed the state test, I think as a teacher you 

are more motivated to take on the task of working with those students. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now, Mr. Reidenberg, is the data on the state level— 

a lot of it can be valuable on an aggregate basis without personalization. 

For example, if pregnant teens are dropping out, nothing is being 

done, or if a lot of low-weight babies are not doing well because you 

missed an opportunity for early intervention because you didn’t 

take advantage of that, can—how can we make sure that we make 

best use on an aggregate state-wide basis of the information without violating individual privacy? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. That is a great question. That is exactly what 

I was referring to when I said that we aren’t challenging that this 

information can be very important and used for very legitimate 

reasons. 

The issue is really who needs to know the identity of the student 

and, you know, why does the state need to know, for example, that 

Johnny or Sally dropped out of school for religious reasons. That 

is one of the codings that states report on. 

The issue there is how do you structure the technical architecture so that the—— 

Mr. SCOTT. You mean you might—— 

Mr. REIDENBERG [continuing]. States get cohorts—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Wait a minute. You might not need that particular 

student, but you might be interested in a lot of—— 

Mr. REIDENBERG. In the cohort. You want to know what is happening with the cohort. So it is certainly—I can easily see—and the 

commissioner, I am sure, can speak to this, but the cohort information the state needs to know, but does the state need to know that 

it is Johnny or Sally in this particular district who had this particular problem? 

I think if the state needs to know it, then the state needs to be 

able to publicly justify it through a rule-making proceeding or some 

kind of enabling statute so that the public can decide if that is real-
48 

ly—or the public can make an assessment if the government is accountable. 

Mr. SCOTT. You look to me like you—— 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate that. 

Chairman MILLER. And then we will go to Mr. Roe, so just quickly. 

Mr. WENNING. This issue of should the state have it, should the 

state know it, gets down to an issue, again, of what service do we 

need to provide to our schools and districts as a state. 

And we are all familiar with our federal system. We have got a 

complex one. I have 180 school districts, ranging from 75,000 students to 25 students. All of them have the same legal expectations 

from all of you here. 

If every district were to keep its own data warehouse, we would 

have many without them at all. There are basic efficiencies for the 

state to manage a state-wide data warehouse. Role-based access is 

essential. FERPA is clear. Those that have a right to the information should have the data. 

But it is much more effective and, in fact, much more secure for 

the state to do this effectively at the state level and then provide 

access to our districts and schools, rather than having, in our state, 

180 data warehouses with 180 privacy processes. 

And this is simply a matter of effectiveness and efficiency in the 

state doing this work. At the same time, states need major investments to manage this data more responsibly. And I think that has 

been pointed out very clearly. And it is a very important issue. 

There ought to be government—we have a government data advisory board that manages how we govern this and provide access to 

information. We have an education data advisory board that reviews every data collection and makes recommendations to the legislature or the state board to eliminate them. Those are critical 

safeguards. 

But state management of this information is essential if we want 

to have the effectiveness that we are looking for in education, and 

we have that tension, basically, to grapple with. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Roe? 

Mr. ROE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And first, just a question toward the chair for information. With 

41 states having this data collection—we ran across it in electronic 

medical records. You have one type of system here, one type of system here. None of the systems talk to each other. It is terribly expensive to do that. 

Do we have in our bill, the stimulus package—have we dedicated 

money so that a state can go in at a very low cost and get a generic 

system to get the data we think they need? Is that available? 

Chairman MILLER. I think Mr. Wenning can answer that as an 

example, and then perhaps I can elaborate. 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Not yet. Most of our 

collections are required by the federal government, and there is a 

data dictionary and entities like the Data Quality Campaign have 

been incredibly helpful in helping us get to exactly that vision. But 

right now, we have multiple disparate systems in our state—— 
49 

Mr. ROE. But you have had to go—or you have had to—right, 

and that is incredibly inefficient. And we have seen it with DOD 

and V.A. where they spent $10 billion and can’t talk to each other. 

Mr. WENNING. Right. 

Mr. ROE. And—— 

Chairman MILLER. Well, but, you know, I think, obviously, we 

are—you know, we come along and—Mr. Kitchens, go ahead. Let’s 

have people with experience speak before those of us with an opinion speak. 

Mr. KITCHENS. In our district, we use 12 disparate data software 

programs built by different vendors, and it is a hugely expensive 

issue. But there is a group called the School of Interoperability 

Framework Association that has set a lot of standards—not all of 

them—for data translation between disparate systems. 

And one of the things that I will tell you that we—3 years I 

thought I am ready to distribute data to parents. For 3 years, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, we felt we were ready. And 

then there would be another thing come up and, ‘‘Oh, my gosh, I 

can’t distribute this data because I have got a privacy issue with 

this because I don’t know how many families live in one residence.’’ 

And there is an economic unit—there are four economic units 

over here in this one address, and I didn’t take that into account. 

And my goodness, I cannot distribute this data based on address. 

I can’t distribute this data based on something else. 

There has to be business rules in place, and there have to be 

very serious business rules. It took us 3 years before we finally said 

we have family information management business processes in 

place that we know that we can allow our parents access, and they 

will see their data on their children, and that data only. 

And we even have a failsafe in the system that if the status of 

a family changes—address, let’s say one student leaves out of three 

in a family, there is a divorce, there is something else happening— 

then access to records is immediately suspended. That is a business 

rule. Don’t let it go on. Stop and resolve it. 

Those kind of business rules have to be in place at the district 

level, site level, to protect the privacy—— 

Mr. ROE. I guess what I—and not to interrupt, but my time is 

limited, but wouldn’t it be simpler if we created—and much less expensive—you have obviously gone to tremendous—at your own expense, Mr. Kitchens, in Oklahoma to do that. 

Just to make a point, I think we need—— 

Chairman MILLER. That is a very important point. I think the 

purpose of the grants to the states is that the states will look 

across the state of California or Colorado and decide that with the 

mobility of this population now that you can’t have systems that 

don’t talk to one another, can’t—— 

Mr. ROE. Exactly. And what we do, Mr. Chairman, is we create 

systems that don’t talk, and then we create another whole business 

in between to make them talk to each other. I mean, that is—I 

have seen that in an electronic medical record it happens all the 

time. One system—anyway. Move on. 

Ms. Hartley, thank you for your comments. I think, obviously, 

data is important. I have used data my entire life to treat patients. 
50 

You obviously use data to evaluate students and performance of 

your teachers. 

And I think I could not agree more—without information you 

can’t make any meaningful change. I think the problem that I have 

is certainly how this data is managed. Is there bias involved in the 

data? 

I will give you an example. Think about the—in ‘‘The Blind 

Side,’’ this young fellow who is picked up off the street with a supposedly 60 I.Q., and if look—if someone had looked at that data 

and said, ‘‘Well, he can’t be taught.’’ Well, it turns out he is a college graduate and did very well. 

And so I worry about data creating bias, too. And math is a little 

different. Math is an absolute, but not necessarily so with other 

things. 

And just a comment from you all—I would like to know a couple 

things. One, a comment was made—is how do you determine the 

same starting date for the child. How do you know that a child is 

on the same level when you made that? Because one kid may be 

here and one here. How do you know that? How do you know they 

are at the same level of learning, through testing, or—— 

Ms. HARTLEY. Are you talking about—— 

Mr. ROE. When you measured performance. 

Ms. HARTLEY. Okay. 

Mr. ROE. You said we started at the same level. How do you 

know that? 

Ms. HARTLEY. Well, not all students start at the same level, and 

that is what—— 

Mr. ROE. Right. 

Ms. HARTLEY [continuing]. Value-added does. It allows us to say, 

‘‘Okay, you know, Johnny has’’—in Ohio, 400 is passing on the 

state test. So let’s say that Johnny has a predicted score of a 452. 

Johnny is a very bright student. He is predicted to not only pass 

but do very well on the test. 

Sally has a predicted score of a 385. Sally has not performed well 

on tests in the past. Students like Sally have not performed on the 

subsequent tests. Therefore, Sally is not predicted to pass the state 

test. 

What value-added does, then, is says okay, after Sally and Johnny have taken the test in that grade level, you know, Sally’s predicted score was a 385, and Sally’s score is a 395, which is still not 

passing, it is still not at that 400 mark, but Sally has made growth. 

And that is what—— 

Mr. ROE. I agree. 

Ms. HARTLEY [continuing]. We need to look at. And your reference to the movie ‘‘The Blind Side’’—you know, we have students 

like that. I have students like that in my classroom right now who 

are, you know, traditionally low-achieving students. 

And it is not necessarily my goal that they pass the state test 

that year, but it is certainly my goal to do everything in my power 

to, in the year that I have them, raise their level of achievement 

so that maybe after two or 3 or 4 years of that level of growth they 

are able to achieve that. 

Mr. ROE. I believe you would achieve that. 
51 

I want to ask one question and then yield back my time, and 

they can—if they have time later. With all the data we have now, 

why do you think the U.S. system is failing? 

We have got all this information. Why are we failing? 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Wenning? 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very quickly. You 

know, data, data, everywhere, right? Data rich, information poor. 

The key is we have not put this into a useful format for educators 

so that it is information, and so that we can build knowledge. 

So this issue of data to information to knowledge is the key sequence. We collect tons of data. It is useless because we think that 

crunching it is useful. Well, no. Educators need information in context so they can act on it. 

And that is why we are not getting any breakthrough results 

with the data we have currently. 

Mr. ROE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Polis? 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank the panel for their really important testimonie on this 

topic as we go into the ESEA reauthorization process. The data and 

the data systems are one of the most important benefits, I think, 

that can come out of our federal education reform. 

Mr. Wenning, I want to congratulate you and Commissioner 

Jones in Colorado and the rest of your colleagues for your innovative efforts to create a accountability system that focuses on all students reaching college and career readiness by high school graduation. 

I think the model that Colorado has come up with provides something that we can learn from in this ESEA process, and I applaud 

your hard work on developing the Colorado Growth Model. 

My first question is regarding the potential of new technology to 

foster the widespread understanding of performance. And of course, 

the more people can understand performance—families, parents, 

academics—it can promote new and broad public conversation and 

motivate public pressure for sustained reform. 

Specifically, the new Web-based tools can provide a critical way 

to empower parents through giving them information about school 

choice. However, the digital divide is a major obstacle, especially in 

low-income communities and some of the communities most in need 

of the very empowerment that these tools are attempting to provide. 

Frequently, parents have limited or no Internet access or aren’t 

aware of where or how to find that useful information, or have a 

language barrier or a literacy barrier to acquiring that information. 

Can you discuss what additional policies and strategies are necessary to ensure that the information actually reaches and empowers parents, particularly parents from an at-risk background? 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Polis. Incredibly important question. And I would say there are really two issues. 

One—and this is where the federal government comes in—we have 

got to close the digital divide and make sure that we have 

broadband throughout the entire nation. 

And as you know, we still have parts of our state that don’t have 

access to high-speed Internet. And that inability is a major chal-
52 

lenge. And of course, we have the technology to overcome that if 

we have the right investment into that. That is one step. That 

opens up the pipe, but it doesn’t bring about the understanding. 

One of the things that we are doing is that anything we provide 

on the Web has got to be available in a print format. We have got 

to organize it in brochures. We have got to do cable TV. We have 

got to make sure it is in multiple languages. 

And basically, the role—and this is an incredibly important role 

for the state, because we have the capacity to reach an entire state, 

and we have to basically be very deliberate in working with our 

parent groups, our educators and making sure that we have community forums. And those are all things that require investment 

and time. 

States need to get into that role and recognize their most important function is really to build the understanding of a child’s performance to their parents so they can engage constructively in 

schools, and that is going to take a—really, a multilayered approach. 

But of course, the federal government can really be helpful on 

the broadband issue, so that we do close that digital divide. 

Mr. POLIS. I applaud the emphasis on reaching families. Ironically, the powerful and compelling information that you could provide if it was provided only to the information elite and parents 

who already have a lot of advantages could actually be used to perpetuate some of the learning gaps that have—that exist by empowering parents on the positive side of that divide to go to the schools 

or attend schools that are better. 

I understand that Colorado is taking an open source approach to 

SchoolView and the Colorado Growth Model. Can you briefly just 

describe why that is important? 

Mr. WENNING. Sure. Thank you. One, you know, think about the 

iPhone and the apps that are emerging. We found that by creating 

an open source data visualization platform it has created a lot of 

room for for-profit and non-profit vendors to work with us. 

But what we are trying to do is build collaboration among states 

to get to a common understanding of performance. You know, for 

those of you that are in the private sector, we can interpret a balance sheet in the same way from company to company. In education, we have no ability to do that. 

In fact, we constantly have debates about evidence rather than 

how we are actually going to do better. And so what we are trying 

to do is measure student progress in a common way to understand 

the productivity of our education system, be able to do return-oninvestment analysis, do that with other states like Massachusetts, 

and begin understanding really what works, rather than just having debates about it. 

And by having an open source approach, we found multiple 

states now that are joining our effort to understand student 

progress in the same way, how much growth a child is making, and 

whether it is good enough for them to catch up, to keep up, or to 

move up to higher levels of performance. 

And the open source aspect of this is—means that we are really 

leveraging public and private investment and makes it—makes the 

barriers to entry really low for other states—— 
53 

Mr. POLIS. Briefly, by open source, you mean that academics, 

amateur psychometricians and hackers can play around with this 

information and create new ways of looking at it on their own, and 

if they catch on, they catch on, and if they don’t, they don’t? 

Mr. WENNING. Yes. Now, that doesn’t mean they can play around 

with confidential student information. 

But the visual tools that we are creating are essentially trying 

to create an open market for application development that is useful 

for teachers and parents and students. And that is really what we 

are trying to motivate nationally through our work. 

Mr. POLIS. Yes. Let me clarify that the word hackers has several 

definitions, so the one I was alluding to is people who like to code, 

not people who like to crack privacy firewalls. 

I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Cassidy? 

Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. Reidenberg, Mr. Wenning, it seems metaphorical that you are on either end of the spectrum, because I really 

get different messages from the two of you. 

I have a sense that although everybody is concerned about privacy, Mr. Wenning, you see the potential in regression analysis, 

put in a bunch of variables, some of which may seen unrelated, do 

your regression analysis and come out with an R squared which indicates that, ‘‘Wow, this is significant. We never thought it would 

be.’’ 

Mr. Reidenberg, I have the sense that you are a little bit more 

kind of, ‘‘Wow, this is what we need, and this is why we need it,’’ 

and less exploring the possibilities in fear of sacrificing privacy. 

That said, let me ask specific questions of you both, and then I 

will ask you to comment upon my premise there. 

Mr. Reidenberg, I am struck that some of the things that you 

point out as being kind of crazy may actually have a rationale. 

So when New Jersey contracts with Montana to take their Medicaid-specific data to an out-of-state database, that may be because 

the Montana database has experience with HIPAA regulations and 

they are segregating that data because there is a whole ’nother 

kind of legal set of rules for that database activity. Is that a fair 

statement? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. No, I mean, New Jersey is contracting with a 

private vendor to handle all of New Jersey’s database. It is not—— 

Mr. CASSIDY. Well, that is what I saw in your testimony, that it 

was specific for Medicaid information. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. I am sorry? 

Mr. CASSIDY. I thought I saw in your testimony that it was—— 

Mr. REIDENBERG. No, what—— 

Mr. CASSIDY [continuing]. Specific for Medicaid information. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. What you saw was the way New Jersey has 

structured its system, it is using—it is paying for the database on 

the general education student population using money coming from 

the SEMI and MAC programs for Medicaid, which are funds designed to reimburse states for health costs associated with special 

education children in their classroom. 

Mr. CASSIDY. I see, so they are broadening that application to include other educational data even though in the spirit of the law 

it would be for medical aspects. 
54 

Mr. REIDENBERG. In that case, New Jersey is diverting Medicaid 

money. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Got you. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. I personally think it is Medicaid fraud. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Wait till the new health care bill hits. But that is 

another story. 

That said, some of this seems like it could be dealt with—it 

seems like you have a specific issue with patients—excuse me, student-specific indicators, so if you are using Social Security, clearly 

you just want a unique identifier. 

And you mentioned a dual architecture. I assume that you want 

one database for research purposes and another database for the 

most appropriate person to be able to see student-specific data, 

your dual architecture. Can you—— 

Mr. REIDENBERG. Look, it is not—no, the dual architecture structure is one in which the state officials are being structurally separated from the identity of individual students—from identifying information for individual students. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Now, let me ask you—Mr. Wenning’s comment, 

how you have 180 school districts—if a kid commits a felony and 

is expelled and goes from one end of the state to the other, how 

is that data transferred? How would you see ideally that data 

transferred? 

Because under Mr. Wenning’s—I could see that the data will be 

transferred because you have a state-wide database in which, 

‘‘Wow, the kid is expelled. Why is the child expelled? He pulled a 

gun on a teacher.’’ 

Mr. REIDENBERG. Well, that information has always been transferred. The incoming school will—at least historically, from my experience as a board member, if we were receiving a child from out 

of district, we have the child’s records from the former district 

transferred to us. 

That can be done today by electronic data interchange as opposed 

to paper files, as it was in the old days. But that information—you 

would want to get it directly from the school system. 

In Colorado’s example, the state is centralizing the data 

warehousing function. It may make sense in Colorado, not necessarily in other states. When you centralize the data, you magnify 

the risks of—— 

Mr. CASSIDY. So then your—— 

Mr. REIDENBERG [continuing]. Privacy—— 

Mr. CASSIDY. Just because I am limited on time, so your point 

isn’t so much that you are absolutely against centralizing data, it 

is just that you would want stronger safeguards to avoid the spillage that you spoke of in Nashville, et cetera. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. That is correct. It is not the centralization. 

Again, I am not—this data, as we have heard, is very valuable for 

determining school performance quality measures. 

Mr. CASSIDY. Now, one more thing, and then I will go to you, Mr. 

Wenning. 

When someone decides to leave because of religious reasons, for 

example, I could imagine that you might want to do a specific initiative to reassure members of that religious community that know 

the school is a safe place teaching your values. 
55 

I guess—more information—not less, because it seems like I am 

a physician, the more data you have, the more likely you see relationships you never thought could exist. So what are your thoughts 

on that? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. So why should the state have the list of children, specific children, of a particular religion that are leaving 

school? The fact that—— 

Mr. CASSIDY. No, no, no—— 

Mr. REIDENBERG [continuing]. You have a group, yes, but—— 

Mr. CASSIDY [continuing]. No, no, no, not of the unique identifier, 

but rather—again, you mentioned a cohort. At some point, a cohort 

becomes an individual, and so you still want someone to say, ‘‘Wow, 

we have a uptick here on a regression analysis that we have lost 

a bunch of kids because of X.’’ 

Mr. REIDENBERG. Yes, that can be valuable. But again, I think 

that is a decision that needs to be made at a public public-policy 

level rather than a technical behind closed doors which, from our 

study, seemed to be the case. 

Mr. CASSIDY. I am just out of time, almost. 

Mr. Wenning, your comments on all that? 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you. You know, Mr. Reidenberg’s observations are extremely well founded. I think what I disagree with, perhaps, are the conclusions. 

Strong security safeguards are absolutely essential, and the examples he cited are unfortunate and unconscionable. It is essential 

that states do a better job with privacy. 

My argument, though, would be that the likelihood of building 

those types of safeguards in are going to be much more likely done 

at the state level than in our 180 school districts that have very 

limited capacity to do so. They are still required to capture this information. 

The focus on educational accountability and performance is an 

imperative. We need to do much better for our children. And this 

information is critical to bringing that about. But I do not want in 

any way to diminish the concern over student privacy and the need 

to have very solid safeguards. 

And I think his analysis is spot on in terms of the kinds of recommendations that he has got, but I don’t want to make—I want 

to make sure we are not throwing the baby out with the bath water 

on state data systems. They have to be more secure. They are incredibly useful. 

Chairman MILLER. Congresswoman Chu? 

Mr. CASSIDY. Thank you. 

Ms. CHU. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

This question is for Mr. Wenning and/or Mrs. Hartley, and it— 

I actually have two questions pertaining to distinguishing between 

the growth or the value-added assessment models. 

And do you distinguish between them? And one might be more 

appropriate for a particular school district. My concern is that it 

seems that since the value-added model relies on aggregate data 

that it might be more appropriate for homogenous student populations. 

And I am wondering whether that model is as well suited to 

school districts with highly diverse populations, say an urban dis-
56 

trict where you have a large number of suburban students and a 

very, very large number of poor inner-city school students with 

many ESL students. 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you. I will take that. So yes, these terms 

are batted around a lot, and value-added models and growth models are different things. The choice of them is really a policy issue 

in terms of what questions we are trying to answer. They are both 

applicable to any type of school or student population. 

And the main distinction is one of attribution and where the attribution should be made. So the value-added model that Ohio 

uses, that Tennessee uses, is designed specifically to attribute a 

quantity of student progress to either a school or to a teacher, so 

there is a calculation of a teacher effect. That is modeled within a 

statistical model. And so for example, how persistent is a teacher 

effect over time? There is an assumption that goes in there. 

A growth model like the Colorado Growth Model does not make 

that attribution. Instead, we ask the educator or the user to make 

the attribution. 

And so for example, when we use this to look at educator effectiveness, the question we ask is what are the growth rates of students associated with this teacher, and we like to look at that over 

three longitudinal cohorts and then, as a principal evaluating that 

teacher, they would have that information. 

A value-added model would provide an effect coefficient for that 

teacher that would say this much of the students’ learning was attributed to this teacher. And essentially, the attribution is made in 

the statistical model. We choose to have that attribution rest with 

the user. 

And the reason we do that is because we want to make sure that 

the quantity is useful to a teacher and a parent and a student. And 

quite frankly, I find it very difficult to explain an effect coefficient 

to mom and dad. 

So there is a level of precision that is lost with a growth model 

because of where the attribution lies, but we find that the body of 

evidence, particularly using the data visualizations we showed, we 

are able to move up and down from a single child to an entire state 

with ease using the same language throughout, a very straightforward language. 

Value-added models are incredibly useful for research and evaluation purposes, and so the choice of them really depends on the 

questions the school or district or state is interested in answering. 

Both have a very important function, but they represent two approaches that are not at all incompatible with one another. 

Ms. CHU. Could you use both simultaneously? 

Mr. WENNING. Sure, absolutely. And again, depending on—what 

question you want to answer and what—with what level of precision would dictate the kind of model you would like to use. And 

both kinds are readily available in the open source community and 

from specific vendors. 

Ms. CHU. And what about my question about which would be 

more appropriate for a large urban school district with a widely 

variable population? 

Mr. WENNING. Both are equally appropriate. Again, it just depends on what questions one is trying to answer. For example, if 
57 

you want to answer with great precision how well a reading program is improving student outcomes, and you want to control for 

a variety of other variables and answer that with the precision that 

a researcher would demand, I strongly recommend a value-added 

model. 

If you wanted to disclose this information so parents could make 

good choices and you want to just sort of democratize all the 

hypotheses, a growth model pushed out would be a great way for 

the public to engage immediately without requiring a researcher to 

answer that question. 

So both are appropriate for a large system. And again, whatever 

questions one wants to answer and with what level of precision 

really dictates the kind of model you would like to use. 

Ms. HARTLEY. I just have one comment to add. As I work with 

groups of teachers, it is very nice to have a growth model that does 

factor out specifics like socioeconomic status, race, all of those factors that, unfortunately, in my experience in working with teachers, is one of the first things that teachers like to point to for failures in students’ achievement. 

When you work with groups of teachers and students who are 

failing, rarely do you see a teacher that stands up and says, ‘‘Wow, 

that is my fault.’’ So one of the first things that we point to is, you 

know, home life, all kinds of factors that a growth model completely takes out of the equation. 

And from a professional development standpoint, that is extremely important so that teachers are actually looking at and understanding that the growth measurement that you are looking at 

is actually what you as a teacher have attributed to that child’s 

learning. 

Mr. WENNING. If I could just add, because I will share a slightly 

different perspective, and this is an important one. It is why it is 

important that states be able to make choices. We actually firmly 

disagree with controlling for race or socioeconomic status. 

Instead, we have created a growth model that is unbiased based 

on race or socioeconomic status, and we control for one thing that 

we think is the most important gap, where a child starts, regardless of their race or socioeconomic status. 

And then we disaggregate those results by race and socioeconomic status so we have a common growth measure. What we 

found is that folks can make excuses very quickly about home life 

or about socioeconomic status, so we don’t control for it. We 

disaggregate by it. But that was a choice our state made. 

Chairman MILLER. I am going to use the prerogative of the chair 

for a second. 

Mr. Kitchens, you started out your testimony talking about mobility, what Mr. Wenning just finished saying. I assume the questions of mobility, where that student started when they entered my 

classroom is a very important factor in terms of how we allocate— 

how we believe that classroom or that teacher or that school is 

doing. 

If a child came 2 years behind, and I am judged a failure because 

they didn’t make that—they didn’t meet proficiency at the fourth 

grade or the fifth grade, whatever, that can be factored in this data 

also, as I understand it, and your use of it. 
58 

Mr. KITCHENS. That is absolutely true, and I believe that—— 

Chairman MILLER. Because this is a major complaint among—— 

Mr. KITCHENS. Yes. 

Chairman MILLER [continuing]. You know, highly mobile districts 

where teachers say, ‘‘Wait a minute, you know, the raw material 

came to me in this form.’’ 

Mr. KITCHENS. All of the data that we have—and we hired a— 

we are not a very big school district, but we hired a Ph.D. research 

statistician and, you know, he came in, and I asked him to do a 

study on behalf of the students in the district, and to tell us what 

the top three issues were in our district that impeded academic 

success. 

And he came back with attendance is the number on issue. If 

students attend more than 90 percent of the time, they have a 

much greater chance of being successful academically. And yet I 

will tell you that it troubles us deeply that we don’t see enough activity at our level, at the state level particularly, backing us up to 

get students in to school, okay? 

The next issue that he said that was extremely important was 

mobility, and the third issue was discipline, and that if these—if 

a child had attended school 90 percent or more of the time, if a 

child had been with the school at least a year academically, if the 

child had no more than three discipline issues in a year, that they 

were almost universally successful academically in that sort of—— 

And so you know, we really take those issues very seriously. And 

this issue of mobility—I tell you, I think that we have to standardize some information, because we have to pass that information 

to people and to stakeholders and to parents on behalf of their children. 

I mean, if you look at the parent, the student and the teacher, 

you have to be able to pass information between the parent and the 

student and the teacher. And if you organize your systems to do 

that—you know, I am not talking about necessarily at a state-wide 

level, but at the functional level, at the school level—we have to 

do this. 

And we have to be able to inform the next district because in 4 

years, sir, 45 percent of my children will be mobile. And they will 

drop out at twice the rate of all of the non-mobile students. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. KITCHENS. And they will fail at twice the rate. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mrs. McCarthy? 

Mrs. MCCARTHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank the panel. It has been really fascinating to look at the 

data. And this is something that a number of us on the committee 

have been thinking about for quite a long time, and I thank you 

for the hearing. 

My colleague Rush Holt has been working on data collection and 

matrix access. He is actually going to be introducing today—that 

I have been working with him on. 

With a lot of the questions that, you know, have been coming 

up—the privacy issue, which I think everybody certainly is concerned about—I mean, that is one of the things that we are looking 

at even in the health care debate, is the privacy issue. 
59 

But we also know that that information, that data, has to get out 

there. But one of the things that I have been thinking about as you 

have all been talking—when you get the data, and you see on one 

of the graphs that you showed on the screens that, all right, here 

is your—you saw a teacher doing very, very well with a certain 

population, and you saw a teacher that was just doing okay, and 

then looking at the growth of the child, student, what—is that over 

a year’s time? 

I mean, when do you start making the corrections? Do we lose 

a year of the time of the child’s life? Is it possible that in 3 months 

you are saying, ‘‘You know, something is not going on here?’’ How 

do you make that change so we are not looking at a year or 2 years 

or even 3 years? 

Mr. Kitchens, when you say, you know, we have—you know, I 

am sorry to say that a lot of my under served schools in my district—there is a big dropout. It is probably 45, 50 percent. That is 

unacceptable. 

And I know in the city, New York City, in Brooklyn, they have 

been able to track these kids and they actually bring them in to— 

I am not going to say a precinct, but pretty close to it, and they 

have the teachers there. They are going to make sure that these 

kids continue their education while they go to an alternative school 

so they can get them back into the regular school. 

One of the things they said, though—the kids didn’t want to go 

to a regular school. They like the alternative school because they 

got more attention. 

So I will go back to my original question now. How long does the 

data come in when you are tracking the teacher and the child? And 

where do you see about that time—you know, what has—needs to 

be moved to help both of them? I will throw that open to everybody. 

Mr. KITCHENS. I would love to answer that question. I fundamentally believe that we have to retool our schools at the school site, 

at the classroom level, to deliver data in near real time, that we 

have to become actively engaged in developing formative assistance, that we assess our students on a fairly regular basis within 

the year, that we point out where they are having problems, that 

we establish a common vocabulary for what we teach, so that we 

can articulate between institutions and between classrooms and on 

behalf of the students to make it easy to understand a common vocabulary that we can apply. 

We have actually received a grant from an institution in Oklahoma, a foundation called The Inasmuch Foundation, to do that 

very thing. I think that being able to understand in a common way, 

for parents to understand where their children needs help—or need 

help, in reading comprehension, in word attack skills, and that sort 

of thing, and to make it that simple for people and to support 

teachers as well. 

We need to move data in near real time fashion to whomever, to 

the teacher, to the student, to the parent, move data as well—we 

have to set some standards for what we teach and how we teach 

and articulate those to everybody concerned so that everybody understands what is happening with the child. 

Ms. HARTLEY. I will speak to the graphs that I put up there. 

Those data are available typically in September, so in September 
60 

2009 we looked at those data. They are based on—primarily on 

tests that students took in May of 2009, the state—the Ohio 

Achievement Test that they took. 

And those graphs basically measured the 2009 results of students with their predictions, and so their predictions are based on 

their longitudinal test history. We see those once a year, and that 

is unfortunate. If it were an ideal world, I would have that data 

every week so that I can, you know, constantly evaluate how I am 

teaching and the things going on in my classroom. 

Unfortunately, you know, the state test is given once a year, and 

with the data system that we use, that is the type—that is the 

level of test that is needed to calculate that type of growth measurement. 

Mrs. MCCARTHY. Okay. 

Ms. HARTLEY. But you are right, there is a definite need for more 

immediate timely information. 

Chairman MILLER. All right. Thank you. 

Mr. WENNING. Oh, I am sorry. What Mr. Kitchens described is 

exactly what could be, and the fact that that is not the reality in 

most schools in the United States is probably the single biggest 

reason that we have been flat for so long in performance. 

We are holding folks accountable, but we don’t give them the 

basic tools and information they need to actually get the results we 

are expecting. And that fundamentally is what this longitudinal 

data is—should be used for, not compliance, but rather to provide 

the kind of support that educators need and deserve in real time 

about their students to engage constructively in education. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. If I may also just address the longitudinal aspect of it, because I think your question was focused on the immediate term, how do you bring it into the classroom right away. One 

of the aspects that we observed with these databases is they are 

being set up precisely to archive data over time. How long? What 

happens with the old data? 

For it to be valuable to come up with new curricula, new standards, new ways of measuring performance, there needs to be a commitment for a extended period of time. We are talking 20 years. 

And I think it is an important question that is not really being 

asked. 

Are states—is the federal government—willing to fund for 20 

years the maintenance of these systems? If they are not, if the commitment is not there now for doing that, then how will the privacy 

questions be addressed when several years’, 5-, 10-years’ worth of 

data is sitting there, and all of a sudden the state decides, ‘‘Oh, 

that didn’t work. It didn’t help us answer these questions about 

why the school has been failing, so now we are going to stop it.’’ 

But the data is still there. 

Chairman MILLER. Mrs. Biggert? 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I am sorry I have been in and out and—so I hope I am not 

asking the same questions. 

But, Mr. Wenning, in your testimony you demonstrated the ability to examine the data by subgroups, including students with 

IEPs, and I think and as you know, one of the biggest challenges 
61 

under the former NCLB and now the ESEA—one of the biggest 

challenges is how to measure achievement for special needs students. 

And I know that we have—you know, we have heard all the stories from some of the teachers about how concerned they were having to give the kind of tests that they did to these students. And 

given that your state’s data system can measure student growth, 

how do your districts use this data to improve instruction for these 

children? And do you use the IEP? 

Mr. WENNING. We do, and of course, the state assessment is one 

data point for any student, including those with disabilities. And 

so what we do is provide the information on student growth rates 

for students that are on IEPs, and that information can then be interpreted by schools and districts to understand how well their 

children are doing based on where they began and compare that to 

others and benchmarks so they can understand whether their students with disabilities are growing faster or more slowly than the 

next school next door or in any district, and then allow them to 

benchmark where they see the best performance happening. 

That summative assessment that we administer at the end of the 

year is only so useful for these purposes, but we want to make sure 

that any assessment we use—and this is a nice addition to the 

other evidence and learning objectives in a child’s IEP so it is one 

part of a body of evidence. 

But importantly, it does allow any educator to understand how 

well their child on an IEP is doing compared to any other child on 

an IEP, controlling for where that child began. So again, that initial starting point is the most important aspect of this. 

And so it is used to better inform whether their practices are actually producing the results they expect. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Okay. 

Then, Ms. Hartley, do you have anything to add from a classroom perspective to this issue? 

Ms. HARTLEY. Sure. Interestingly, this year I have a sixth grade 

inclusion math class that I have. About half the students in there 

are on IEPs. And they will take the state test along with everyone 

else. 

And you know, our level of expectation—when I say our, I have 

a special education teacher that co-teaches the class with me. We 

have high hopes for how they will perform on the Ohio Achievement Test, but our true expectations is that we make positive 

growth with every single one of those students—that, you know, 

the student who is predicted to score 340, you know, realistically 

could pass on a good day maybe, but if, you know, he or she scores 

a 390, which is still not passing, we have made a lot of positive 

growth with that child. That is going to be a success for us. 

And so as you look at some of these policies, that might be something to look at when it comes to special needs students. Where is 

it we really need for them to end up? Do we really need for them 

to score that 400 on the state test, or do we need for them to show 

growth? 

Mrs. BIGGERT. I think that that is one question that I have been 

asking, should we just use the IEPs in that case. But then, Mr. 

Reidenberg, you know, there—you have been talking a lot about 
62 

the significant privacy concerns that you discovered in looking at 

the student data systems across the country. 

And do you think that this would put a kibosh or do you think 

that this—using the IEPs rather than just the testing? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. I think including the IEPs on an identifiable 

basis at the level of the state is a risky proposition, because there 

will be a state where there is a data leakage. It will happen. And 

when that happens, I think it will alarm significantly the parents 

of classified children. 

In my district when I was serving on the school board, we saw 

experiences where parents were very reluctant to have their children classified, because they didn’t want them labeled. And we saw 

instances where parents wanted their children classified because 

they wanted the 504 accommodation for testing. 

And if that kind of data is fed into a permanent record, so to 

speak, I think it will certainly have a distorting effect on the goals 

that the IEPs are designed to achieve and the goals of the 504 accommodation in ways that I don’t think we can anticipate right 

now. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. What kind of a breach would cause that concern? 

Mr. REIDENBERG. All it will take is for a state official to lose a 

laptop that has all the information on IEPs from kids throughout 

the state, or 10,000 kids in a school district. 

In Nashville, when Nashville had its data breach, I can check 

whether Tennessee included—whether students had IEPs. But 

when the data set was put on the Internet without security, if it 

were a state that was recording IEP status in the state-level database, that would have been out to the world. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Ms. Woolsey? 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you. 

This has been so interesting. Thank you, witnesses. I am not 

going to repeat the questions everybody else asked, so I am going 

to get to—I decided that I was going to ask the questions that parents would ask. So I think we need to know—parents want to know 

how is my child doing, is my child learning, is my child keeping 

up. 

And they need to be, I believe—parents need to be taught and 

trained how to read the data. I mean, this is just going to be a lot 

of stuff to a lot of parents. 

And there is a lot of parents that I know in my district—they get 

a lot of their information from their teachers over their computers, 

so we have to bring in a whole group of parents that don’t even 

have computers, if that is going to be necessary. 

So how are we going to treat these parents and—so that they can 

be partners in this? I know we are talking about finding out what 

are the better teachers, and of course every parent wants their student in the better teacher’s class and in the better school, but our 

goal is to make all schools good. But can you talk to me about that? 

And another thing. Maybe each one of you could tell me what social service data do you consider pertinent so that we can actually 

educate the whole child. I mean, because there is information that 

needs to be taken into account. 

I see, Mr. Kitchens, you got excited to answer this. 
63 

Mr. KITCHENS. I think it is extremely important to train parents 

in this day and time, and I think common language issues about 

having it easily understood, what we are trying to teach their children, is extremely important. 

I mean, we can get lost in ‘‘educanese’’—— 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Yes. 

Mr. KITCHENS [continuing]. So to speak. And we need not to do 

that. We need to be very direct and be able to create reporting, 

what I will call parent-friendly, student-friendly, teacher-friendly 

reporting, about what we have taught, how successful we have 

taught it. 

And I think that, you know, when you think about a common 

language, I want you to—I want to give you this thought, that really the way we learn, when we learn, it is kind of like in a hierarchy, if you kind of go back to the way people learn issues when 

they are in school, how do students learn, in what order, in what 

sequence. 

And there is kind of an order and sequence in a lot of ways, not 

totally, because we learn in differing ways. But there is a common 

language, I think, that can be developed that is hierarchical that 

could—people could follow—people—parents could follow. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Right. 

So, Mr. Wenning, do we think parents care if it is value-added 

or growth model? 

Mr. WENNING. No, I don’t think—— 

Ms. WOOLSEY. What do they want to know? 

Mr. WENNING. Parents are very clear about what questions they 

want to answer, and you hit them right on the nail—how much 

progress is my child making; is it good enough for them to catch 

up or to keep up if they are already there, and if not, what are we 

going to do about it; and how good is the school at serving my 

child. 

Those questions are of interest to every parent. And we are very 

deliberate in stating that that is the single most important customer for this information. And it is why we are very deliberate of 

our language. 

And Mr. Kitchens is exactly right. It has got to be clear. It can’t 

be 15,000 districts using different language for their parents and 

every school in the country, and that is why it is so important for 

the state to set the tone as well, so it is not just a few districts 

that are able to do this, but we get to a national conversation. 

And of course, that means longitudinal data, and that means 

some risk on privacy. But this is an incredibly important leveler for 

our parents to engage, and we need to be leaders in closing this 

digital divide so that every parent has access to this high-quality 

information that allows them to constructively engage in their 

schools. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Ms. Hartley? 

Ms. HARTLEY. I guess I would like to come at this question as 

a parent. I have a son who is in fifth grade who is a gifted student, 

and my fear for him is always that he is not going to be challenged 

enough. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Right. 
64 

Ms. HARTLEY. And so you know, as a value-added specialist, I obviously have a whole wealth of knowledge and can look at his information and come at it from that standpoint and support his teachers and his learning and help him make the years with the growth 

every year that he needs to make. 

And that is important for those students as well. I think sometimes we think about those kids that need to catch up and engaging those parents, and those are definitely—all parents are important to engage in the conversation. 

From a teacher’s standpoint, I have in the past used value-added 

reports with parents. They tend to come at it—they are a little confused, and I think the confusion comes from the culture that they 

went to school in. 

Education traditionally did not necessarily measure growth. We 

give kids tests and how you score on the test is your measure. It 

is an achievement measure. We didn’t necessarily measure, you 

know, this is where you came in to the chapter, this is your understanding of this concept now and this was your understanding at 

the end of the chapter. 

We are not necessarily a culture that is used to looking at growth 

measurements in schools, and so I think that that is probably an 

important piece that we need to involve parents in, understanding 

measurement of growth in schools and not just achievement scores. 

Chairman MILLER. Mrs. Davis? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you all for being here, and I certainly hope I didn’t miss 

this in being out of the room for a little while. I am particularly 

interested in teacher evaluations. 

And yet I do believe that we have not given teachers enough of 

what they need to be able to make the adjustments in their classrooms with the kind of information that they are provided. 

I am wondering—and perhaps this is to you, Mr. Wenning—what 

is it that is going on in addition to the data that is making it possible for teachers to be able to make those adjustments? Is it particular training that they are getting? 

One of the things that we know about some school systems is 

they have a very good strong collaborative model, and I guess this 

goes internationally as well, where teachers mentor one another. 

They talk about their students. They have time to do that. They 

are not just in their classroom, you know, by themselves all the 

time. 

So what is it that you think is really critical that is more dynamic so that the data systems actually work for teachers in a way 

that they can make the changes that are required to be certain 

that kids can be more successful? 

Mr. WENNING. That is just an essential question. The keys to 

this are providing that result very quickly, and it has to be over 

time, because actually we are interested in progress, not just a 

snapshot. And that is why the longitudinal aspect is so important. 

Immediately, though, that has to be connected to an instructional 

strategy that works, and so that requires linking it to a battery 

of—and a body of instructional strategies that might be openly 

available in the public or might be recommended by other educators. 
65 

And the amount of digital information that is emerging now that 

can be connected through social collaboration, which teachers are 

beginning to use—I receive the chairman’s tweets from this committee. 

I am not sure if you are sending them, but, you know, we are 

all communicating readily now. It is that connection between the 

students’ progress over time on multiple bodies of evidence to specific instructional strategies, and then allowing real-time collaboration both in schools and districts and buildings but, more importantly, across school districts, perhaps globally. 

One of the things we have done in Colorado—and this is—I will 

plug our Race to the Top proposal—is we have created a number 

of ways for educators to get access to this, including an open marketplace where an educator can contribute a lesson plan or instructional strategy, and if it is highly rated by another teacher as making a contribution to their practice, it would trigger a $1,000 royalty from the state. 

Now, that is a way of getting pay for performance that is not tied 

to personnel evaluations but rather encouraging teacher professionalism and contributions to one another’s practice. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Some districts believe that in order for them to bring 

this about, though, they need, you know, a lot more resources and 

money. This is something that it seems to me shouldn’t overwhelm 

districts and their ability to actually make this happen. 

I mean, how do you—I will take California, for example, and the 

chairman is very familiar with this. I mean, we are aware of the 

budget today. 

We know that we have been behind in terms of data collection, 

and I would be curious in terms of whether you feel that there has 

been the kind of communication out there and strategies that 

states even as large as California and as complex as California 

could pick some of this up. 

What is it that—how do we talk this through with a community 

that is a bit hysterical right now, and for some good reasons, because the budgets have been so impacting on helping kids, you 

know, move forward? 

Mr. WENNING. It is a tough time. Thomas Friedman talks about 

the great inflection happening during the great recession. 

We are cutting $260 million of state resources at the time we are 

adding a whole new round of accountability requirements, saying, 

‘‘Hey, we are going to make these great investments in structural 

improvement systems, and let’s do it,’’ and try—and trying to build 

that excitement is challenging in this tough time. 

But the Race to the Top investment and the state longitudinal 

data system investment is incredibly well timed. This type of really 

substantial investment in instructional improvement systems, 

which is a key aspect of the data assurance, is so well timed right 

now, because when I speak with teachers and parents, they are so 

ready for this information. 

They are tired of the old way of holding people accountable and 

not having the basic resources they need. And so the customer is 

ready. 

And with the investment coming from the—you know, the federal 

level on these particular use—you know, tools for use, not tools for 
66 

compliance or accountability, but this emphasis on instructional 

improvement is critical and is, again, well timed and should 

produce the results we are expecting from them if there—if these 

dollars are well invested. 

But I see no resistance from educators, who are our biggest supporters, or our parents for this kind of information, because they 

are starving for it and haven’t gotten it before. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

I would just add that the—and unfortunately, I represent in 

some cases at various times the poorest performing schools in the 

state, and when you audit those campuses, those sites, sometimes 

they are awash in money but they are absolutely at sea as to what 

is happening on campus. 

They don’t know anything about their students. They don’t have 

any communication with their parents. They are just managing the 

site for 8 hours, 10 hours a day, and then—and they are just—they 

just have no discussion of that. 

This is really also about a very efficient use of those dollars that 

this information can bring about in real time. 

Mr. Hinojosa? 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with much of 

what you said in that statement, because I, too, come from an area 

that is very, very poor, and with some of the highest dropout rates 

that I have ever seen. 

But by the same token, that area has several schools that are in 

the top 100 best high schools in the whole country, and so I identified with what Mr. Kitchens learned from that counselor or that 

analyst that came in and gave you the three reasons why students 

who have a high daily attendance and mobility and good student 

discipline have the basis for learning and succeeding, because that 

is the difference between the schools that are having a very high 

dropout rate and the ones that have 97 percent attendance, they 

stay with that school ninth through the 12th grade, and they have 

a student disciplined if they must, or they send him back to the 

sending school district. 

But together with student and parental involvement emphasizing 

early reading and writing literacy, teachers trained to teach in 

their major, and basic tools such as a good library and good science 

lab—that gives us 97 percent graduation rate, 97 percent going to 

college, unbelievable response, even though we are very poor. 

But this whole thing today has been so interesting that I have 

missed other committee meetings because I wanted to stay and 

chat with you. I want to learn more, because I think this improves 

instruction and helps us close the achievement gap. 

Mr. Wenning, my question to you is how important is it to have 

this student-level data, especially for measuring growth in subgroups such as English language learners and minority students? 

Mr. WENNING. It is essential. Ultimately, we have an interest in 

equity, not just in opportunity, but now the movement to getting 

really equity of results. It is essential that we understand how different student groups are doing. 

And in looking at that very carefully—and there is such an important federal role, because without NCLB I don’t think many 
67 

states would have done this. By looking particularly—I will use the 

example of English language learners—we were able to break some 

myths in Colorado. 

Our old accountability system, which was just focused on AYP 

and achievement, basically discouraged schools from wanting students that had a low starting point. 

When we began measuring growth using the Colorado Growth 

Model, which only looks at where a child starts and then says, 

‘‘How much progress are they making based on all other children 

with the same starting point,’’ we learned something amazing 

about our English language learners that folks didn’t want to believe until they saw the data. 

And that is in Colorado, English language learners outgrow their 

native language peers in every grade level in every subject. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. If I may interrupt you—— 

Mr. WENNING. Yes. 

Mr. HINOJOSA [continuing]. That is very interesting. Tell me, 

how can we afford in the school districts to be able to put in this 

kind of educational accountability system? What does it cost? 

Mr. WENNING. To do what we did, the costs are relatively low. 

Again—— 

Mr. HINOJOSA. What is low? 

Mr. WENNING. Everything I showed you for the Colorado Growth 

Model and what we rolled out to across the state—it was about $2 

million. Now, the—— 

Mr. HINOJOSA [continuing]. 200? 

Mr. WENNING. Two million. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Two million dollars. 

Mr. WENNING. Yes, and that is state-funded. Now, there is a 

large investment in the back end, and so we started talking about 

these state longitudinal data systems, the back end data warehouse 

that relates all the evidence. That is much more expensive, and 

that is where the state longitudinal data system dollars are going. 

But in order to—our growth model—it is free to other states. So 

when Massachusetts adopted it, it cost them zero. It is just—— 

Mr. HINOJOSA. But if the states were to make the investment, 

then the school district could tap into that—— 

Mr. WENNING. Absolutely. 

Mr. HINOJOSA [continuing]. And thus not have to come up with 

the 2 million. 

Let me ask a question of Katie Hartley. 

I really enjoyed your presentation. I love math. While many 

teachers across my state of Texas recognize the value of using data 

to improve teaching and learning, they would say that they do not 

have enough time to review data during the school day. So how 

often do they do it? 

Ms. HARTLEY. That is a great question, and I completely agree. 

There is just never enough time. The principal in my building gives 

us a half day in the fall, and I work with each department during 

that half day, 3-hour time, and we go through—excuse me— 

achievement scores from the prior year as well as value-added 

growth scores. 

And we use that in conjunction with some other pieces of information that we have gathered through some formative assessments 
68 

that we have the students take, and we write action plans for the 

upcoming or present school year at that point. 

And then we have a system within our schedule during the day— 

all of our students have study hall at the same time, and that allows teachers then to—one teacher might have, you know, 50 students in a study hall, but that frees up another teacher to collaborate with teachers either in their grade level or in their department. 

And so grade levels meet at least once every 2 weeks and departments meet at least once every 3 weeks during the school day, during that structured time, to look at data, to work on the steps in 

the action plan, and that is one way that our school has very creatively and effectively gone about making sure that teachers have 

that collaboration time. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. My time has run out, but it is all very interesting. 

Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Holt? 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for bearing 

with us for the full hearing here. 

This is something that a number of us have been interested in 

for some time. Representative McCarthy mentioned that she and I 

are introducing today a bill called the metrics bill. 

It is not because we think that this is the end-all and be-all of 

legislation, but we want to clearly make the point that the NCLB 

mandate of infrequent high-stakes tests may have some value for 

somebody somewhere—I am not sure—but it is pretty much worthless in informing instruction. 

And I visited a school district in New Jersey not too long ago 

that showed me that data-driven instruction can work. This was 

one of the—what we call Abbott school districts. Low performing 

districts that fall under a Supreme Court case. 

And in this district, they have in recent years now been offering 

frequent tests, the results of which are communicated to—throughout the school system and to the teachers almost immediately, 

within hours, and the teachers use the data to modify their instruction. 

And rather than finding it threatening or intimidating, the 

teachers—or intrusive—the teachers seem to love it. And so it gets 

me to two questions. We have mandated these infrequent highstakes tests—I mean, Congress has, through NCLB. 

In a revised elementary and secondary act, should we be mandating more frequent collection of data? Should we be mandating 

data systems that are built on frequent input of data so that teachers can use that to modify their instruction? 

Secondly, if we are going to specify a data system to be used, how 

do we make sure that the first—that it is used primarily to illuminate student instruction? 

Now, it may also be used for teacher evaluation of teacher performance and so forth, but it seems to me the greatest need is student instruction, because going back to Ms. Woolsey’s comment, if 

we are talking about accountability in schools for adequate 

progress, what every parent thinks, what every taxpayer thinks, 

what every person would think is not how does this year’s fourth 
69 

grade compare with last year’s fourth grade, but how are Tommy 

and Susie getting along. 

Chairman MILLER. The chair is eagerly awaiting the answer. I 

think you have asked two great questions here, and I want to make 

sure there is time for the answer. 

Mr. KITCHENS. I would like to take a try. 

Chairman MILLER. Take a shot. 

Mr. KITCHENS. I, number one, commend very highly what you 

have suggested. I believe that we need to move toward formative 

assessments, and that we need to move toward growth models that 

are formative-based, and that we need to retool our schools to do 

that. 

Now, you know, from my perspective, NCLB as it exists right 

now is about taking a look at differing students over the same time 

frame, and it doesn’t make any sense to moms and dads to do that. 

It doesn’t make any sense to teachers to do that. 

What we need to be doing is looking at the same child over time 

but through a formative assessment environment where we are informing instruction and articulating instructional needs to the 

mother and father and to the teacher, and having the teacher able 

to look into a program and actually suggest to the teacher maybe 

some—use data to suggest how to inform instruction. 

And I supported NCLB, and I think there were some good things 

that came out of it. I think we just need to morph into this more 

informative model that I think would be better and would sustain 

us over time. 

Mr. HOLT. Mr. Wenning, could—— 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you. Our view is that we need to have a 

comprehensive assessment system. We should continue the requirement to have annual summative assessment. We need to make 

sure we are investing in formative and interim assessment. 

Summative assessment footprint can shrink and should not 

crowd out the formative and interim practice and assessment 

which is vital to provide that real-time information. 

But we have both national accountability interests and local performance management purposes. Both have to be balanced. The 

balance is off right now. 

But the annual summative assessment, the ability to measure 

progress in a common way, to understand what kind of return on 

investment we are getting from our tax dollars needs to be maintained. But it can shrink in its role so that we leave much greater 

room for outstanding formative practice to emerge and allow that 

to be the focus of educators. 

But we would urge a balanced approach on this to make sure 

that we actually can have the understanding about how effective 

we are nationally in reaching that goal. 

By the way, that lets us—lets the federal government start holding states accountable rather than reaching right into our schools 

and districts. So that is important in terms of what kind of roles 

we have between federal, state and local as well. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. May I say something? I share the view as a 

former school official that continuing assessment is very valuable. 

But be careful what you ask for, because if you make that manda-
70 

tory—are you talking about making it mandatory at the district 

level, or making reporting mandatory back to the states? 

So a parent will ask you, ‘‘Why does the state have Johnny or 

Sally’s biology test result from this week?’’ Because that is what 

happens in the state reporting systems, the test results get—that 

are mandated are getting reported back to a state database. 

And to your second question, how do you assure that the information is primarily used for student instruction, statute. Regulation. Have these databases—the uses been defined legally. Have 

the restrictions on their use been defined by law so that there is 

a way to enforce that that is how the data is used. 

Ms. HARTLEY. I would just like, very briefly—I know we are 

short on time—coming into teaching 10 years ago, I was a very 

young teacher when No Child Left Behind was, you know, implemented. And I would just like to say that—— 

Chairman MILLER. You are still young, and I am still stuck with 

No Child Left Behind. What the hell are we doing? [Laughter.] 

Ms. HARTLEY. Thank you. I would just like to say that I think 

that sometimes we miss that, you know, No Child Left Behind, at 

least in my state and in my school, put a lot of emphasis on what 

was being taught in reading and math, and I think that is a wonderful thing. 

I don’t think we need to necessarily throw out those summative 

tests at the end of the year. I think they are invaluable in measuring whether or not schools are—and teachers are teaching the 

things they should be teaching and students are learning the 

things that they should be learning. 

But I also agree that that formative piece, those assessments 

during the year that lead up to that summative assessment at the 

end of the year, are extremely important and probably would give 

us more valuable information that would inform instruction than 

one summative assessment at the end of the year. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Kucinich? 

Mr. KUCINICH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding 

this hearing. I am sorry I am just joining you. I was chairing a subcommittee meeting down the road. 

I have read over some of the testimony, and I think that this 

committee certainly has some contributions that we can make in 

the area of privacy protections. 

I was particularly struck by Mr. Reidenberg’s testimony where 

he talked about ways that we can make it possible to protect children from disclosure of sensitive information that really is unrelated to the educational environment. 

I would like to just—and also, I was interested in the valueadded approach to data that one of the witnesses was discussing. 

Mr. Chairman, you know, it may be beyond the scope of this 

hearing, but since we are talking about primarily a system which 

relies on a quantitative approach, is anything being said here or 

does anyone here have any thinking about a more qualitative approach towards education? 

I mean, No Child Left Behind was totally structured based on a 

testing regimen. And I am interested in your experience, even 

though all of you are here talking about rather discrete quanta. 
71 

What about a qualitative approach? And is there anything that you 

would recommend based on your experience that might lend itself 

to measurement of qualitative approaches? Whoever would like to 

respond. 

Mr. WENNING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is an excellent 

observation, and quantitative and qualitative are both important. 

And we think it is important that as Congress reauthorizes ESEA 

that you consider making an investment in qualitative approaches 

of school evaluation. 

Let me be specific about what I mean, and that is to use models 

like the British inspectorate system and other approaches of school 

reviews. In our state, we use this—you know, the quantitative accountability system. It is a good signaling device. 

It tells us where there are strengths and where there are weaknesses, where there is persistently low performance and where 

there is persistently high performance that we can learn from. 

But then to intervene in a school that is low performing, we need 

to send a team in of educators to really examine the practices that 

are being used. Those reviews can be diagnostic and they can also 

be summative. But they are essential if we are to actually understand why a school is either succeeding or failing. 

Document that and share that information, that qualitative evidence, along with quantitative—provides a much richer perspective 

for educators to support improvement. 

Mr. KUCINICH. Anyone else like to try? 

Mr. KITCHENS. Could I respond there? 

Mr. KUCINICH. Please. 

Mr. KITCHENS. I think that it is extremely important if we are 

going—you know, we have this data, and we are using data to inform instruction. That means we need new management practices 

instituted in schools. 

So I think that leadership needs to be potentially rethought, that 

there needs to be an investment in leadership and in change considered that would really have us go back and review. 

Everywhere that we have seen data take hold of our economy 

and improve our economy, inevitably there has been business rule 

adaptations that had to be adopted, had to be instituted. We are 

going to have to do this in education, I think, in a big way. 

Mr. KUCINICH. Well, I want to thank the gentlemen. 

Mr. Chairman, I am through asking the witnesses questions. I 

just want to pose this to you. Our education system tends to promote linear thinking. The data-oriented approach that subsumes 

the educational system is ingrained with and conducive to linear 

thinking. 

And I am just wondering if—in our approach that this committee 

uses that we shouldn’t, particularly with a new administration, expand our horizons to look at what—how do you get out of this box 

that we are in. I am not rejecting the idea that we need measuring, 

but how do you get out of this box that we are in to move towards 

more creative, qualitative approaches? 

So I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. REIDENBERG. Mr. Chairman, could I interject just one thing? 

Privacy, I think, is a critical piece for being able to think about the 
72 

qualitative side, because to the extent that these data sets—the 

data collections that are being managed without adequate attention 

to privacy—it de-emphasizes the child’s dignity. It de-emphasizes 

very important aspects of the whole child and how that whole child 

is treated in the educational system. 

So I think if you want to address the qualitative side, you have 

to have privacy as a piece of it, because that is going to help assure 

it for you. 

Chairman MILLER. Any last comments? 

Thank you very much. This has been a very good panel, I think, 

a very helpful panel. And I am a very proud author of No Child 

Left Behind, co-authored with others. 

And I think that the—you know, we allowed people for 25 years 

to hide their failures within the systems. We knew a lot about the 

top 15 percent, 20 percent of the students in this country, and now 

we know a lot about the entire student profile. 

The question is now what are we doing with that information, 

and this is really what this committee is working on in a bipartisan 

fashion, is that next iteration. 

And it really is about moving to a workplace that looks more like 

a modern workplace, management that looks more modern in 

terms of the management, which is a great deal of collaboration, 

about sharing the responsibilities across work forces, across customer bases—in this case, it would be parents, families and the 

community—and seeing how you can share that information to develop that quality, to develop those tools and to develop those— 

what are our expectations for young people, and to have them be 

able to realize them. 

We recognized, obviously, in the middle of No Child Left Behind, 

if you will, or from then to this date, that a growth model started 

to make more sense, that we were holding people accountable for 

things they had no control over, and we continue to refine that idea 

in this legislation. 

One of the ways we refine that is through information, through 

data, because, again, many schools don’t have a clue about the populations. They don’t know what has been going wrong. They don’t 

know what is happening in their classrooms. And that sounds like 

maybe a very harsh indictment. Just visit a lot of schools and you 

will find a lot of schools where teachers are desperate for help but 

it doesn’t come. 

And I think the data—this kind of data that we have discussed 

this morning really give us the best opportunity to draw out the 

talents and to call upon the capital that exists in schools today but 

doesn’t necessarily—we don’t polish that diamond, we don’t help 

that process, because we don’t understand the composition. 

It is interesting that in 1-year’s time this administration has 

taken the two most recalcitrant uses of data, health care and education, and moved them into a new century. And it has great peril, 

has great concerns, but the fact of the matter is—talk about quality. My colleague talks about quality. 

If you have health insurance in my district, over 60 percent of 

you will probably have Kaiser. And the fact of the matter is when 

you see how they manage caseloads, how they manage families in 

the—in asthma epidemics and others—you now see the story in the 
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Wall Street Journal where hospitals, non-profits, profits, and Kaiser are moving across to share data systems because they recognize 

the mobility of their patients. 

When you are in an emergency, you may not walk into your 

home hospital, your home health plan or anything else. And that 

information is critical—the medical errors problem. All of these 

things, and now we look at this. 

What we ended up with in No Child Left Behind, which is unacceptable, is that on a single data point we take one of the most 

complex organizations in American society and we make a judgment on whether that school failed, the teacher failed, the student 

failed, the family failed, the community failed and the system 

failed. 

There is no complex organization in our society that would make 

those kinds of judgments if they were doing it for real consequences. And we did it. What we have now is an opportunity to 

use this data to help every component of that system to be better 

informed and to target their talents and to strengthen their weaknesses. 

To me, that is the promise of data. And it has to be carefully 

managed. It has to be protected in terms of privacy. But the fact 

of the matter is what we are starting to see is where teachers are 

exposed to the data in real time that is designed to help them, it 

becomes their friend. 

It just isn’t about my pay, or my hiring or my firing, it is about 

do I get to take my hopes and desires, wishes and talents and utilize them to—the best that they can. 

And I do this at a lot of teacher sites, and I am very—I am fascinated when a teacher in California will ask a question and a 

teacher in Arizona will answer it, referring that teacher to a teacher in northern Michigan and to see what that response is. 

We are empowering, and we are providing this kind of information. It is happening without us, but we are not getting the full 

benefit of it, certainly not at a school site. 

That teacher may be getting that benefit, but the school site is 

not set up so that that teacher can then share with his or her colleagues or with the principal to enlighten the principal about a better practice or a better way for that lesson—— 

And so if we—you know, as we move away from a system that 

is very regimented to that one test day on that state test, and everything else is disregarded, hopefully we do—we are able to then 

realize the real potentials of the opportunity of education. 

I think we also expand the school day rather inexpensively if we 

include after-school programs and what can be accomplished in 

that time frame, what can be accomplished at home if parents are 

informed as to what is—what the expectation is for tomorrow in 

class. 

These are real opportunities that do not exist in most schools 

under the current system because of the lack of information and 

knowledge about the student population and the community resources that are available. 

And I think over probably longer than my term in Congress, we 

will also understand that education is very much more of a process 

than a place, and data allows us—the students to take themselves 
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to other places to learn, whether it is the museum, or whether it 

is an art gallery, or it is the girls’ and boys’ club, or it is scouting 

and a merit badge and subjects in school. All of a sudden, all of 

this becomes possible. 

So thank you. Thank you. You have been out there riding on the 

edge, and we appreciate that. And I think this is one of the most 

important things we will do in this reauthorization. 

And, Mr. Reidenberg, absolutely, you raise issues that I think 

every member on this committee shares and is passionate about, 

maybe from different ideological points of view, but we are passionate about it, and—but I want to be very careful that we don’t 

start getting into mandates of what is or is not. 

There may be a reason a state wants to know about this age population for another reason. That is their decision, you know, but for 

the educational components, we want it used for this purpose, but 

I don’t want to override what other decisions the states made. 

But with respect to this particular data, I think you are right, 

we want to know how it is going to be used and for what purpose 

is it being gathered, because, you know, it is like people get excited 

about Web sites, and all of a sudden they have 12,000 of them. 

They don’t know why they have 12,000, because they are only 

using four, but anyway, it is so exciting to have access to all this 

information. It is also costly. 

Thank you very, very much. 

Thank you, Mr. Roe, for your participation this morning. And we 

look forward to continuing to work with you as we progress on the 

legislation. 

And all members will have 14 days to submit additional material 

and questions for the hearing. 

And with that, the hearing stands adjourned. Thank you. 

[Questions for the record submitted to Mr. Wenning follow:] 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

Washington, DC, April 19, 2010. 

Mr. RICHARD WENNING, Associate Commissioner, 

Colorado Department of Education, 201 E. Colfax, Denver, CO. 

DEAR MR. WENNING: Thank you for testifying at the Committee on Education and 

Labor’s hearing on, ‘‘How Data Can be Used to Inform Educational Outcomes,’’ on 

April 14, 2010. 

Committee Members have additional questions for which they would like written 

responses from you for the hearing record. 

Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has asked that you respond in writing to 

the following questions: 

1. Mr. Wenning, you acknowledge the importance of qualitative data to the assessment of school performance and the value of the ‘‘inspectorate’’ model to the educational system in England; however I note that in the Administration’s blueprint 

for ESEA reauthorization, the four intervention models for ‘‘Challenge’’ schools seem 

to lack any sort of method for qualitative data collection (to complement the quantitative data upon which such a judgment is based). In the context of assessing 

school and student performance, what are the consequences of giving too much 

weight to quantitative data relative to qualitative data? Would it not make sense 

for underperforming schools to have a method of school quality review that is based 

on qualitative data collection? Additionally, would it not make sense to have such 

a method of school quality review available to more than just the lowest-performing 

schools? 

2. Mr. Wenning, school- and district-level data is only one side of the coin. When 

we talk about student/classroom assessment, we largely mean standardized tests 

and other quantitative data collection methods—NCLB has ensured that. Can you 

speak to the value of qualitative data collection at the student/classroom level, and 
75 

how that might be used to assess student performance without subjecting students 

to repeated, high-stakes standardized tests? How can Congress, as it contemplates 

the reauthorization of ESEA, improve state and local capacity to develop and conduct student/classroom assessments that incorporate qualitative data collection 

methods? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee staff. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the 

Committee. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

Responses to Mr. Kucinich’s Questions From Mr. Wenning 

1. Mr. Wenning, you acknowledge the importance of qualitative data to the assessment of school performance and the value of the ‘‘inspectorate’’ model to the educational system in England; however I note that in the Administration’s blueprint for 

ESEA reauthorization, the four intervention models for ‘‘Challenge’’ schools seem to 

lack any sort of method for qualitative data collection (to complement the quantitative data upon which such a judgment is based). In the context of assessing school 

and student performance, what are the consequences of giving too much weight to 

quantitative data relative to qualitative data? Would it not make sense for underperforming schools to have a method of school quality review that is based on qualitative data collection? Additionally, would it not make sense to have such a method 

of school quality review available to more than just the lowest-performing schools? 

The question sequence of what? so what? and now what? is useful in considering 

the answer to your questions. Student and school performance can be measured effectively using quantitative evidence based on summative, interim, and formative 

assessments. That is, such data is useful in answering the question of what is the 

academic performance of the school. 

Quantitative evidence is also useful in answering the so what question given that 

such data directs our attention to inequities in academic outcomes and subjects of 

strength and weakness. 

Quantitative evidence falls short, however, in diagnosing root causes of weaknesses in performance. Qualitative evidence of school process and practice is essential in answering the question of now what will we do to improve. Qualitative school 

reviews, informed by quantitative evidence of performance strengths and weaknesses, play an essential role to inform school improvement efforts. Failure to understand root causes of performance problems can set educators on a course of pursuing quick fixes that do not set a path for sustained improvement. Qualitative 

school reviews are useful to all schools and especially low-performing schools that 

will be the recipient of large investments of Federal funding for improvement efforts. 

As Congress contemplates the reauthorization of ESEA, it should consider including a prominent role for qualitative school reviews to inform school improvement efforts and to evaluate the efficacy of school interventions. 

2. Mr. Wenning, school-and district-level data is only one side of the coin. When 

we talk about student/classroom assessment, we largely mean standardized tests and 

other quantitative data collection methods—NCLB has ensured that. Can you speak 

to the value of qualitative data collection at the student/classroom level, and how 

that might be used to assess student performance without subjecting students to repeated, high-stakes standardized tests? How can Congress, as it contemplates the reauthorization of ESEA, improve state and local capacity to develop and conduct student/classroom assessments that incorporate qualitative data collection methods? 

The design of assessments is a function of funding availability and the kinds of 

questions they are intended to answer. Performance assessment that incorporate 

demonstrations of work or simulations can provide timely and useful feedback to 

students and educators that drives insight and action. Assessments of student work 

progression through demonstrations, for example, still will yield a quantitative score 

based on a rubric. So the quantitative vs. qualitative distinction may be less important that the nature of the performance task that is the subject of the assessment. 

Large scale performance assessments that yield valid and reliable evidence are more 

complex and expensive than many current state assessments. 

As Congress contemplates the reauthorization of ESEA, it should pay close attention to the kinds of summative assessments developed with the Race to the Top 

(RTTT) assessment competition resources and the formative assessments developed 

through RTTT phase 1 and 2 awards. These resources present a major opportunity 
76 

to invest in both large scale and local assessments that incorporate richer perspectives on student and classroom practice. 

[Whereupon, at 12:33 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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