OLR Bill Analysis

sSB 1014 (File 648, as amended by Senate "A")*

AN ACT CONCERNING LONGITUDINAL STUDIES OF STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT.

SUMMARY:

By law, the State Department of Education (SDE) must develop and implement a state wide public school information system. The system must provide for the tracking of the performance of individual students on each of the state wide mastery tests. This bill requires SDE to assign a unique student identifier to each student before tracking them.

Starting August 1, 2009, the bill requires SDE to provide data maintained in the system to full-time permanent employees of nonprofit organizations exempt from taxation under IRS Code § 501(c)(3) and organized and operated for educational purposes. SDE must respond to such employees within 60 days of their written request for data and in the order they are received. The bill specifies that the requestor is responsible for the reasonable cost of the request. It requires the Department of Information Technology to monitor fees to ensure they are reasonable and consistent with other state agency charges.

Current law specifies that the system database of student information is not a public record for Freedom of Information Act purposes. The bill provides that this does not prohibit SDE from providing information as described above.

*Senate Amendment “A” (1) limits the individuals who can request data, eliminating references to public school officials, nonprofit organizations, researchers, and educational policy-makers; (2) increases the time SDE has to comply with a request from 30 to 60 days; and (3) specifically allows SDE to comply with requests even though the information is not a public record.

EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009

COMMITTEE ACTION

Education Committee

Joint Favorable Substitute