Bill Text: NJ S576 | 2018-2019 | Regular Session | Introduced

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Bill Title: Requires DOE to provide certain information regarding school peer groupings.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)

Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2018-01-09 - Introduced in the Senate, Referred to Senate Education Committee [S576 Detail]

Download: New_Jersey-2018-S576-Introduced.html

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SENATE, No. 576

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

218th LEGISLATURE

 

PRE-FILED FOR INTRODUCTION IN THE 2018 SESSION

 

 

Sponsored by:

Senator  NICHOLAS J. SACCO

District 32 (Bergen and Hudson)

 

 

 

 

SYNOPSIS

     Requires DOE to provide certain information regarding school peer groupings.

 

CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT

     Introduced Pending Technical Review by Legislative Counsel.

  

An Act concerning data reports produced by the Department of Education and supplementing P.L1995, c.235 (C.18A:7E-1 et seq.).

 

     Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:

 

     1.    In the event that the Commissioner of Education develops a methodology for identifying groups of schools that are similar to each other and uses the groupings to compare schools to each other, the commissioner shall make publicly available on the Department of Education's website:

     a.     a data file that includes all of the original data used to create the groupings;

     b.    a copy of any computer program that was executed to complete the calculations that created the groupings; and

     c.     a detailed written explanation of the steps taken to produce the groupings.

 

     2.    This act shall take effect immediately.

 

 

STATEMENT

 

     Since 2013, the Department of Education has produced the School Performance Reports as the successor to the School Report Cards.  One feature of the report is, for each school, identifying a group of "peer" schools and comparing a school's performance on various dimensions to that of the peer schools.  This bill requires that the department, when releasing such analysis, also provide a data file containing the original data from which the peer groupings were determined, a copy of any computer program that was executed to create the groupings, and a detailed written explanation of the steps taken to produce the groupings.