A new report from the Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations concludes that the state Department of Education made the same mistakes implementing its longitudinal data system for public schools, known as the Idaho System for Education Excellence, or ISEE, that the department made on the earlier, failed ISIMS student data system project in the early 2000s: Failing to involve local stakeholders to build their views, needs and resources into the design of the project.

ISEE, on which the department has spent $12 million since 2009, has led to school districts spending about two weeks of every month preparing for the upload to the system, with a significant amount of that time preventing and correcting data errors, the report found.

“Essentially the development and ongoing management of K–12 data collection has been IT centric,” the report concluded. “Districts are required to input a high number of data elements, many of which were not federally required or evaluated for necessity. The department uses data it collects more for federal reporting and state funding calculations than for answering longitudinal questions.” The report recommends re-evaluating the data elements that school districts are required to report, and strengthening collaborative efforts between the department and districts over how the system should work. The full report is online here.