1. (a) After July 31, 2015, all qualified data collections must be expressly approved by the state board after it is has been reviewed by the committee under subsection (c) before schools and school corporations are required to submit the information to the state board or the department. The department may not require schools or school corporations to submit any qualified data collection unless the qualified data collection is approved by the state board under this subsection. The department shall maintain on its Internet web site a list of all qualified data collections approved by the state board and the deadline by which each school or school corporation shall submit the information.
2. (b) After July 31, 2015, the state board and the department may not sanction, penalize, or in any way hold a school or school corporation accountable for failing to submit a qualified data collection report if the qualified data collection was not approved by the state board under subsection (a).

3. (c) Not later than August 1, 2015, the committee, in consultation with the department, shall review current collection of:

   1. (1) qualified data from accredited schools; and

   2. (2) data collection by another public agency (as defined in IC 5-14-1.5-2 ) of the state from accredited schools.

      Based on the committee's review, the committee shall make recommendations to the state board whether to continue the qualified data collection and ways or methods to streamline qualified data collection and data collection by another public agency of the state from schools, including the development of a standardized school improvement plan template for use by school corporations to prepare school improvement plans. After submitting the committee's initial recommendations regarding current qualified data and data collections to the state board, the committee shall review qualified data collection requests made by the department and the state board after July 31, 2015, and make recommendations to the state board as to whether the qualified data collection is necessary or ways to streamline the qualified data collection. In addition, the committee shall review and make recommendations to the state board under subsection (d) regarding methods to streamline school safety and discipline reporting requirements as well as establishing a streamlined method to uniformly and consistently report instances of bullying throughout Indiana. The committee may not change the data reporting requirements for data used by the state board to place each school in a category or designation of school performance under IC 20-31-8-4 .

4. (d) The committee shall submit its recommendations under subsection (c) to the state board. Upon receipt of the committee's recommendations, the state board shall vote to either approve or disapprove the qualified data request or recommendations. The decision of the state board is final. The state board shall consider the committee's recommendations at the state board's next meeting after receiving the committee's recommendations under subsection (c).

5. (e) The committee may recommend the collection of qualified data under subsection (c) and the state board may approve the recommendation under subsection (d) only if the:

   1. (1) qualified data is not available to the public agency requesting the information from any other source; and
   2. (2) benefit from the collection of the qualified data is greater than the overall administrative cost of collecting the qualified data.

As added by P.L.233-2015, SEC.38.