Texas school districts say overhauling the state’s student data reporting system could hurt their funding

Tweaks to the system Texas uses to collect student, staff and financial data from school districts are raising concerns among school administrators and data specialists across the state, who say the changes have led to thousands of unresolved errors that could potentially cost them state funding.

Each of Texas’s more than 1,200 school districts is required to regularly submit data to the state, including information on attendance, enrollment, students receiving special education, homeless children and how many children complete college-preparatory courses. State officials use the information to determine whether schools are meeting performance standards and how much funding they receive each year.

Three years ago, the Texas Education Agency announced major changes to its reporting system. The goal was to make it easier for school districts and the state to share data and reduce the amount of manual work required of school officials. Districts supported the proposed changes.

Nearly a dozen other states are using the same standard that Texas based its system update on, said Eric Jansson, vice president of technology at the Ed-Fi Alliance, the organization that created the standard. Texas is the largest state to implement the change.

According to TEA, more than 300 districts participated in the pilot program last school year. All school districts began using the new system this school year.

Before the update, school districts sent data directly to TEA after working with a software vendor, ensuring the education agency would have no issues interpreting the information.

Under the new arrangement, software providers are now responsible for sending data to the state, a change that school officials say deprives them of the ability to verify facts before sharing them.

They also say the pilot program uncovered a litany of errors and inconsistencies. In some cases, hundreds of student records—from enrollment data to the number of students in specific programs—did not display correctly.

A TEA spokesman said the agency is confident districts will have enough time to correct any errors between now and the first reporting deadline of Dec. 12. The agency also noted that districts have until Jan. 16 to resubmit any data that needs corrections.

But the districts say they have no idea how to fix some of the errors. Their concerns, expressed in interviews with The Texas Tribune, were not previously reported.

In an August letter to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, Lewisville Independent School District Superintendent Lori Rapp asked the agency to delay the full transition to the new reporting system until all districts were able to successfully submit “100% of all data elements.”

Rapp said thousands of errors appeared after the district’s software vendor uploaded data to the new system during the pilot. Her staff spent “tons of hours” trying to figure out why the miscalculations occurred, she said in an interview.

While Rapp employees have made some progress with the new system since the pilot began, “we have not been able to fully submit, promote, and validate our data to the point where a successful submission would be possible,” Rapp wrote in the letter.

After receiving the memo, the TEA held a virtual meeting with Lewisville ISD officials to discuss their concerns. Rapp said the state did not seem concerned about whether school districts were prepared for the transition.

“Maybe because there are no consequences for them and the stakes aren’t as high, they don’t have concerns,” Rapp said. “But for the districts, the stakes are incredibly high, and it’s a glaring oversight on their part if they don’t see that.”

While the TEA says it has reviewed more than 1,000 reports from school officials of problems with the new system, representatives from nearly a half-dozen districts told the Tribune that the state has not explained what caused some of the errors or told them whether they had been fixed.

School administrators and data scientists who participated in the pilot say the implications of adopting a system that still lacks a clear process for correcting errors are enormous. An inaccurate assessment of students enrolled in Texas public schools could mean school districts receive less funding from the state. Schools are funded based on average daily student attendance and receive additional money if they have children with special needs, such as students with disabilities or children learning English as a second language.

Funding has been a major point of contention between Texas schools and state officials in recent years. Many districts started the school year spending more money than they had, largely because of rising state costs and a half-decade without any increases in the basic funding they receive from the state. Public school leaders are still upset that last year’s legislative session ended without significant increases, even though the state had a record $32 billion surplus.

Texas’s school accountability system also relies on data that school districts report to the state. Some parents rely on those performance metrics to make decisions about where to enroll their children. Poor performance can also lead to state intervention — as happened when the state forced out Houston ISD’s locally elected school board and superintendent last year.

Full accountability scores were not released for five years because of litigation over changes to how districts were graded. Many have released their unofficial scores publicly to share progress with their communities.

School districts say they cannot afford errors in student data.

“I think everyone understands the situation that public education is in right now,” said Frisco ISD Superintendent Mike Waldrip. “And no one I’ve talked to has any confidence that this data is accurate or will be accurate when it comes time to submit it to the state.”

School districts that have tested the new system say they understand that bugs are part of the process. They just wanted more time to work through them before going live.

“We need more answers not only about supporting the system to be successful, but also, as we make sure it’s successful, how are we going to continue to make sure that we’re not being penalized for delays or inaccuracies in the data?” said Mark White, assistant superintendent for accountability at Tomball Independent School District. “And none of those assurances have been received by the districts.”

A TEA spokesman said the agency saw no need to extend the trial period because the pilot showed the channels through which it receives data from software vendors were working.

TEA said it plans to continue working with districts to help resolve any errors well before the first reporting deadline. The agency said districts should reach out if they continue to have problems.

Tammy Eagans, who oversees the student data reporting process for Leon ISD, said the agency has been helpful throughout the pilot year whenever the school district has had trouble transmitting information. She added that the task of transitioning to the new system may not pose the same challenges for her small district of fewer than 800 students as it does for larger districts with thousands of children.

Still, she said she’s “not 100 percent certain” the system being rolled out is working as intended. Extending the pilot “wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Eagans said. But she also hopes the education agency understands districts’ concerns and doesn’t blame them for mistakes they have no control over.

The upcoming reporting deadline “just puts extra pressure on us,” Eagans said, adding that she is “a little nervous, a little worried, but hopefully it will go more smoothly than I think.”

Other school representatives say the pilot was unsuccessful and that if it takes longer to implement the new system, the state should be ready to cooperate.

While summer district filings are the busiest and have big financial implications, each reporting period is important because it helps provide an accurate picture of the district’s latest demographic, financial and staffing situation. For Tomball ISD Superintendent Martha Salazar-Zamora, the upcoming fall filing deadline — the first since the new system was adopted — is the most important.

“If the data is inaccurate, we live with that inaccuracy for the entire year,” she said. “So it matters on many levels.”

Mary Mitchem, a former TEA employee, said she began to worry about system readiness shortly after she was hired in June, to make sure the system was meeting user needs. Mitchem has been out of the agency since early August.

Within days of being hired, she said, apparently no one had done the work to ensure that data from software vendors was accurately translated into the education agency’s system. Having helped manage data systems for Texas school districts and worked on statewide software projects across the country, she said she was also surprised that, two months before the pilot ended, no one had audited or tested the system.

“You’re transforming the government accounting system and you have to make sure it’s sustainable — you just have to,” Mitchem said.

Mitchem raised the alarm with her higher-ups, but her manager told her that any actions beyond ensuring data flows into the new system were up to the software vendors and school districts.

“It just knocked me off my feet,” Mitch said.

In early August, she sent an email to Morath in which she wrote, in part, “If you don’t help fix this, you will have a lawsuit, and it will involve the largest counties in the state of Texas.”