Education Committee
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 act requires SDE to assign a unique student identifier to each student before tracking him or her.
Starting August 1, 2009, the act 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 it receives the requests. The act specifies that the requestor is responsible for the reasonable cost of the request. It requires the Department of Information Technology to ensure that fees are reasonable and consistent with other state agency charges.
The law specifies that the database of student information is not a public record for Freedom of Information Act purposes. The act provides that this does not prohibit SDE from providing information as described above.
EFFECTIVE DATE: July 1, 2009
OLR Tracking: SC: RP: PF: DF