A bill introduced by Sen. Eric Oemig (D-Kirkland) would establish a comprehensive database of student and teacher information from all of Washington’s public schools to evaluate program effectiveness and assess student and teacher performance.

“More and more we have to start running government in an evidenced-based, data-driven way,” said Oemig, vice chairman of the Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee. “We have to start measuring what we’re buying and what the results are. That way we’ll know where to spend the next dollar most effectively. We can buy more of the things that are working and we can cut the things that aren’t effective.”

Senate Bill 5941 would establish the new education data system within the Education Research and Data Center now housed in the state’s budget office. All school districts would submit consistent data, tracking such things as teacher assignments and certification, student demographics, course enrollment and test scores as well as program costs by school.

That data could be used to analyze such things as education funding per student, student dropout statistics and class size.

“My bill is going to specify what kinds of data need to be collected by whom, how often and put into a specified place so we can answer very important questions about the outcomes of our teachers and our kids,” Oemig said.

A data governance group comprised of representatives for teachers, school administrators, agency and legislative budget offices, school district information technology staff and other interests would identify technical hurdles for school districts to overcome in reporting their data. The group would establish reporting standards for schools to abide by but wouldn’t require them to use the same computer software.