Strengthening Educator Workforce Data Act

New national educator workforce data

If enacted, the bill would require the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to collect detailed data on teachers and principals in each civil rights data collection that begins after enactment. Local education agencies and public schools would report counts of full-time teachers and principals, median years of experience, and experience distributions. Teacher experience would be reported in six categories: less than 1 year; 1 to less than 2 years; 2 to less than 5 years; 5 to less than 10 years; 10 to less than 20 years; and 20 or more years (excluding student teaching). Principal experience would be reported in five categories: less than 1 year; 1 to less than 3 years; 3 to less than 7 years; 7 to less than 15 years; and 15 or more years. Schools would also report counts of full-time teachers who meet all State licensing and certification requirements, who do not meet them, and who meet license/certificate/endorsement requirements in mathematics, science, English as a second language, and special education. The data would be disaggregated and cross-tabulated by race, ethnicity, and sex subject to privacy protections, and OCR must coordinate with the Department’s Chief Privacy Officer to protect confidentiality. After each collection, OCR would publish a special report with state totals, disaggregated results shown in accessible formats (for example, percentages or graphs), and the underlying data on the OCR website.