Education researchers and advocates are worried that a newly formalized approval process will make it harder to get information needed to adequately evaluate existing K-12 programs and to recommend innovations.
The process, adopted by the State Board of Education in September to implement a 2016 state law on student data privacy, requires that the elected seven-member board approve all outside requests for student-level data.
It is now possible for a majority vote of the state board to nix a research request endorsed by both the state education commissioner and a research approval panel appointed by the Colorado Department of Education (CDE).