Lawmakers, Arntzen reach ‘impasse’ on database modernization

Ongoing efforts to modernize the collection and sharing of education data in Montana recently hit what a state lawmaker described as an “impasse,” one that could impact a $14 million project to update local schools and the Office of Public Instruction.

The challenges came into focus last week as members of the Legislature’s Education Interim Budget Committee questioned OPI leaders about the purported legal limitations in gathering data specific to individual students. Superintendent Elsie Arntzen insisted that the limits were due to student privacy protections, namely those outlined in the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Lawmakers countered that the agency’s opinion contradicted assessments by their own legal staff and Lance Melton, an attorney who heads the Montana School Boards Association, and maintained that real-time data on student achievement is vital to improving the education of those students.

“If we don’t resolve this in some manner, our tanker truck that we thought we’d purchased to be able to inform students at the desktop, to be able to inform hard-working teachers so they could do a better job, to better inform parents, to better inform higher ed so they can meet students where they are, is going to become a Tonka truck,” Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, said during a meeting on Dec. 13. “It’s going to become a little accountability vehicle that doesn’t do crap, and we’re going to spend $14 million for it.”

The “impasse,” as Jones characterized it, centered on a database modernization project undertaken by OPI more than a year ago using federal COVID-19 relief funds — one that has since triggered a series of disputes between Arntzen and other state officials. Lawmakers voiced concern this spring that the project had “stalled” and passed House Bill 367 to fast-track securing a vendor for the new system before a portion of the federal funding expired. The bill also spelled out, in greater detail, the Legislature’s original objectives in directing the federal funds to OPI for database modernization.

Despite temporarily losing its authority to procure such contracts in April, OPI did finalize an agreement this year with Amazon Web Services and the California-based company PowerSchool to develop the new system. The agency’s latest report shows it had spent $3 million so far on the project as of July 1 and has selected the Kalispell Public Schools to serve as a pilot site for implementing the new PowerSchool system. The full cost of the contract is estimated at $8.2 million — a large chunk of the overall $14 million database modernization effort, which has already seen the launch of a new online teacher licensing system.

“The district edition of PowerSchool benefits teachers with data about their students,” OPI spokesperson Brian O’Leary wrote this week in response to questions from Montana Free Press. “Aggregate data will benefit teachers by allowing the analysis of outcomes across the state. Efficient data collection, including not collecting unnecessary data, benefits teachers by allowing them to focus on teaching their students instead of becoming data entry professionals.”

The Legislature also passed a new law this year to facilitate education and workforce data sharing between various agencies, including OPI and the Department of Labor and Industry. That law, House Bill 949, established a new state board to oversee data collection and sharing activities. Jones and other lawmakers saw OPI’s database modernization effort as a vessel for supplying real-time data for use in meeting the individual needs of students on their ultimate path to joining the workforce, and for gauging the effectiveness of state education and workforce development programs.

However, Arntzen has expressed an aversion to sharing data that would track individual student progress through the K-12 and higher education systems. Her lead attorney and newest deputy superintendent, Rob Stutz, told lawmakers last week that the proposed sharing of individual student data between agencies is partly what has fueled OPI’s concerns about potential privacy violations. Setting those concerns aside, Arntzen said the contract with PowerSchool made no mention of collecting real-time student data and would need to be revisited in order to accommodate that activity. 

That claim was undercut by two PowerSchool representatives who told the committee that various features of the system they’ve been asked to develop for Montana are specifically designed to give teachers, students and parents information they can act on in daily instruction. In correspondence with lawmakers last month, PowerSchool noted that a lack of more robust data would impede the system’s ability to inform local educator decisions on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. The company wrote that OPI’s current approach to data collection appears geared more toward complying with state and federal reporting requirements and not toward affecting day-to-day instruction.

During last week’s meeting, Arntzen suggested that she is not legally directed to collect certain information lawmakers see as essential in realizing their goals for database modernization, adding that a change to her job description in state law next session might help clarify the matter.

“When I sat in your seats, protecting student information was the holy grail. That’s what we did,” Arntzen told the committee’s chair, Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton. “I’m going to continue doing that, Mr. Chair. And if you give me the authority to do otherwise by statute, then I will have to account for that as well.”

Arntzen’s comment generated a strong rebuke from Bedey, who argued that the language of HB 949, which he sponsored, and her elected position give her the authority to collect data necessary to make Montana’s investment worthwhile. Bedey scolded Arntzen for her assertion that OPI had not been consulted in the drafting of HB 949, demanding an apology on behalf of the legislative staff involved.

“I consider it an affront to my bill drafter to have someone suggest that he didn’t coordinate this,” Bedey said. “I would ask for you to walk that back because OPI was consulted in the drafting of this bill. If you had had concerns on this particular issue, they could have been raised. Maybe they weren’t because you overlooked it. I’m okay with that. I’m not okay with you suggesting that you were ignored in this process because that is not true.”

O’Leary reiterated via email Arntzen’s assertion that the data required to be collected under state law is “open for interpretation,” adding lawmakers “must precisely identify what educational data the Superintendent must gather.” He noted that OPI’s contract with PowerSchool does call for the company to enable real-time updates to the system for the benefit of individual educators, but also advanced Arntzen’s claim that a 2016 performance audit by the Legislature found that OPI was not doing enough to reduce the burden of unnecessary data collection on local districts. Arntzen cited the audit last week as further evidence that over-collection of student data would prove problematic for the agency.

“Superintendent Arntzen believes that the concerns addressed [in the audit] about over-collecting data, burdening our schools, and protecting students’ personal information reflect her concerns about HB 949,” O’Leary wrote.

In a follow-up interview this week, Bedey doubled down on his broader concerns about Arntzen’s handling of the database modernization project. Bedey not only sponsored HB 949 but carried one of the two bills in the 2021 Legislature that authorized OPI’s spending of federal COVID-19 relief funds. He argued that lawmakers have been increasingly clear with Arntzen regarding what they expect the results of the project to be.

“The objective for this — the final objective for this — is for us to have a data system that allows our local school districts some analytic capability to improve their delivery of education in the classroom,” Bedey said. “And we’re confident, based upon what other states have been able to accomplish, that this project will deliver that so long as the necessary data is collected.”

As for the path forward following last week’s charged meeting, Bedey seconded Jones’ recommendation to rely on Montana’s new Education and Workforce Data Governing Board, established in HB 949, to resolve the situation and identify the data necessary to meet the Legislature’s objectives. The presiding officer of that board is Department of Administration Director Misty Ann Giles. Other agencies with representation on the board include OPI, DLI, the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education and the Board of Public Education. In Bedey’s words, “This body provides us the way to resolve the impasse that the Legislature has with the superintendent.”