Opening Statement of Councilmember Grosso

Chairperson, Committee on Education

Committee of the Whole
Joint Public Hearing on B22-22-776, District of Columbia Education Research
Advisory Board and Collaborative Establishment Amendment Act of 2018
July 13, 2018

I want to begin by acknowledging what a difficult year this has been for the education sector,
which I know is the motivation behind this legislation. The challenges we have faced around
data and accountability are serious and they are compounded by the vacancy in key education
leadership positions.
Throughout my time on Council, I have tried to promote the idea that access to data is an
incredibly important part of creating good policy. This is why for nearly every bill I have
introduced, I have gathered and analyzed the data to ensure that we have correctly identified
the problem and are crafting solutions based in evidence and matched to the problem.
I also strongly believe in transparency. It is essential to good government. I always publish
questions posed to our agencies on my website, along with the data and answers they share in
response.
Further, the summative evaluation of the Public Education Reform Amendment Act included
recommendations for better data collection and reporting, and the Committee on Education
has worked to support OSSE on this. The Mayor and the Council have invested heavily in
improving the agency’s capacity, and things have improved, even if there is still work to do.
The Committee has also regularly pressed OSSE and education agencies over the past four
years to better share data and make it available to researchers.
Because of all this, I have been open to of the idea of a data consortium, and the more I have
heard from people on the ground, it seems like a good idea. I do, however, have some strong
concerns about this bill in its current format.
Whatever is created must be research-oriented. For us to continue to build upon the efforts of
the past 10 years, we must have more data that correctly identify areas where we should focus
our attention. We know that there is an academic achievement gap. A data consortium should
help better understand what is contributing to that problem as well as identify successful
practices that schools are using to address it.
In order to accomplish this, a data consortium must be forward thinking. The old fights of
“Charter School vs Traditional Neighborhood School” or “Ward vs Ward” do nothing to help
our kids. In fact, they harm our kids. The fact of the matter is we must figure out what is
working and learn lessons from that, across the sector, and across the city. Educators should

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see this data consortium as an added tool in improving their practices, separate and apart from
being held to accountable for outcomes.
Finally, whatever we create must be free from the politically charged language we sometimes
use when discussing our schools. That means this entity must be independent in order to give
us the best information. Our kids’ education is far too important to be a political football used
to garner points.
I am looking forward to hearing from everyone here today about a way to move forward.
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