RORQuotedInWashingtonPost.pdf

In January 2012, Research on Reforms (ROR) issued a public records request to the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) for the release of de-identified students’ records. Research on Reforms maintained that these de-identified student records were public since they had previously been created and released to the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). The LDOE denied the request, claiming that the records were not public and did not have to provide them to ROR.  ROR filed a lawsuit against the LDOE to have these de-identified records released.

The Nineteenth Judicial District Court for the Parish of East Baton Rouge ruled in the LDOE’s favor that these records were not public and, therefore, the LDOE was under no obligation to release them to ROR. This ruling was overturned by the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal, which ruled that these were public records and had to be released to ROR. On Dec. 24^th, 2014, the LDOE downloaded the requested public records to ROR. The raw, de-identified, student records that were downloaded to ROR are now available on this site for researchers or any member of the public who is interested. No claim is made by ROR as to the validity of the data contained within these files. These are the files that were created and provided to CREDO by the LDOE. As such, they contain the same data that were sent to CREDO.