H.R. 8636: Strengthening Educator Workforce Data Act

This bill is titled the Strengthening Educator Workforce Data Act and focuses on improving data collection about teachers and principals in public schools across the United States. Here are the main points of what the bill would do:

Mandatory Data Collection

The bill requires the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education to collect and publish detailed data about the educator workforce. This includes information about both teachers and principals in public elementary and secondary schools. The data collection is part of a broader civil rights data collection effort mandated by existing law.

Key Metrics to be Collected

The bill specifies a range of metrics that must be collected from local educational agencies (LEAs) and individual public schools, which include:

• Principal Data:
  • Total number of full-time principals employed.
  • Median years of experience of principals.
  • Breakdown of principals' experience into categories (e.g., less than 1 year, 1-3 years, and so on).
• Teacher Data:
  • Total number of full-time teachers employed.
  • Median years of experience of teachers (excluding student teachers).
  • Breakdown of teachers' experience into categories.
  • Number of teachers who meet state licensing and certification requirements and those who do not.
  • Number of teachers meeting requirements in specific subject areas such as mathematics, science, special education, and English as a second language.

Data Disaggregation and Cross-Tabulation

The bill mandates that the collected data be disaggregated and cross-tabulated by factors such as race, ethnicity, and sex, which will help in analyzing the educator workforce in a more granular way.

Reporting Requirements

After each data collection period, a special report must be prepared that includes:

• The total number of principals and teachers by state.
• Disaggregated results by race, ethnicity, and sex.
• Visual representations of data, such as graphs or percentages, to enhance accessibility and understanding.

This report will be made publicly accessible through the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights website, along with the underlying data used for its conclusions.

Protection of Data Privacy

The bill also emphasizes the need to protect the privacy of individual teachers and principals. The Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights must coordinate with the Department's Chief Privacy Officer to ensure that personally identifiable information remains confidential during the data collection and reporting processes.

Definitions and Applicability

The bill incorporates definitions from existing education legislation to clarify terms such as "teacher," "local educational agency," and "elementary school." The requirements stated in this bill would apply to all relevant civil rights data collections conducted after its enactment.

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