Idaho’s vast education database is a black hole.
Local administrators send the state troves of data on their students, teachers and schools, after spending hours scrubbing the data for upload. At the West Ada School District, for example, staffers spend about 1,500 hours per year on the job, said Ryan Evey, data solutions analyst for Idaho’s largest district. But none of this helps parents or taxpayers see how their schools are trending, or how they compare with neighboring districts. The data isn’t available in a timely fashion and a digestible format.
Gov. Brad Little, his State Board of Education and the Legislature see the need for a fix. They committed to modernizing the database, the Idaho System for Educational Excellence, to provide real-time numbers on the state’s schools. And, perhaps, cut the local workload.
Neither has happened.
After spending a year picking a contractor, the state rushed to spend $6.2 million in federal money to start the upgrade.
Delays ultimately cost Idaho $8.5 million — the money the feds cut off this spring.
Now Idaho has no plan to finish the job and no way to pay for it. Idaho continues to ride a system that hasn’t changed much since 2010.
A powerful lawmaker has asked legislative staff to investigate the botched upgrade. She said she has tried to get cost figures and details on the ISEE contract, to no avail. She said she was never told the state had issued a contract until last week — when Idaho Education News told her.
“I am in a bit of shock,” said Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, co-chair of the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.
About this story — and what we learned
The State Board of Education in May abruptly stopped a high-profile, multimillion-dollar upgrade of Idaho’s K-12 data system, with little explanation.
Idaho Education News set out to get answers. Here are our key findings.
Idaho spent $6.2 million on the botched project, mostly federal funds.
The federal government clawed back $8.5 million — funding the state expected to use to finish the job.
The $6.2 million went into an internal, first phase of the project. The state has not rolled out any improvements.
Schools are still working on an aging data system. School officials — and their patrons — cannot access data in real time. Uploads are time-consuming and cumbersome.
It took the state nearly a year to pick a vendor and write a project contract — even though state officials knew they were under a tight deadline to spend the feds’ money.
The state has no clear plan to finish the upgrade, and no funding for the job.
To unravel the Idaho System for Educational Excellence story, EdNews’ Kevin Richert requested and reviewed hundreds of pages of public records: the state’s request for bids, vendors’ proposals, and the project contract. The documents shed light on a little-known statewide system that directly affects every school in Idaho — and, in turn, every student and teacher in the state.
What is ISEE? And why is it so important?
ISEE is, in educational longhand, a longitudinal data system.
In simpler terms, ISEE collects a massive amount of data about more than 700 schools, more than 300,000 public school students, and every teacher and classified worker supporting the K-12 system. ISEE then stores the data over time (the “longitudinal” piece of the equation.) The system gathers 364 data points across 15 different categories, with some redundancy: Some of those 364 data points are collected across multiple categories.
When it works, a system like this can do many things.
It can give schools real-time information about the students who arrive at the front door: their academic record and their needs. Districts and charters can see, also in real time, how their test scores stack up with their peers. Administrators can make more informed spending decisions, since they have a better idea of how much state funding to expect, and when.
And as public education faces perhaps the most intense public scrutiny in its history, these systems can provide parents and politicians data to inform their decisions. They shed light on how students perform in the classroom, and how much the state and districts pay teachers and staff.
That’s why all 50 states have longitudinal data systems, although Idaho was the last state to create one.
But in its 15 years, ISEE has never lived up to its potential. Not for a lack of ambition. Originally, the state hoped ISEE would collect data on a monthly basis, then a weekly basis, then a daily basis. That never happened. Next year, districts and charters will file eight ISEE reports, still a cumbersome task.
Along the way, the state stopped seeing ISEE as a tool to track how schools and students perform over time. The state instead used ISEE as an accounting tool — certainly an important function, but a downsized role.
“The department is using the system more for federal reporting and state funding calculations,” said the Office of Performance Evaluations, the Legislature’s auditing arm, in a February 2015 report.
That was 10 years ago. In the fast-changing world of technology and data management, ISEE has stagnated during a lost decade.
‘Outdated.’ ‘Manually intensive.’ ‘Ill-equipped.’
On June 1, 2023, the state began shopping for a company to take on the ISEE reboot.
The state did not sugarcoat the task at hand. Its formal “invitation to negotiate,” a 74-page document spelling out the ISEE project, was packed with legalese. But at great length, state officials described a “piecemeal” clunker of a system, with high miles and shortcomings to match.
The “outdated and manually intensive” system uses aging software, while school and state employees perform many tasks by hand. The statewide system doesn’t always connect with the polyglot of data systems districts and charters choose at the local level. Because data comes in only a few times a year, Idaho can’t track students in real time, or “produce requested reports for policymakers.”
And things won’t get better on their own.
“In the light of new and emerging programs and requirements stemming from the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, ISEE is ill-equipped to keep pace with future needs,” the state said.
But the state hoped to use COVID aid to pay for the upgrade — siphoning from a flood of federal stimulus money. Little earmarked some money from one of the pandemic funds, known as the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, or GEER. This fund put about $42.1 million of federal money at Little’s wide discretion.
In 2022, the State Board and the Legislature signed off on a federally funded ISEE upgrade.
The state earmarked about $30 million.
But it would be two years before the state even hired a contractor.
Hurry up and wait
Idaho leaders expected the COVID money to fully cover the upgrade. But the federal funding came with strict federal deadlines.
So state officials began the summer of 2023 with an eye on the calendar — and seemingly ready to roll.
“The work will need to be accomplished rapidly to ensure that funds are available and properly utilized,” the state’s Division of Purchasing said in the June 1, 2023, invitation to negotiate, the document that kicked off the bidding process.
The purchasing team acknowledged that it would take several years to roll out a new ISEE system. But the team also knew it needed to spend its federal funding by Jan. 28, 2025. To meet those deadlines, the state launched an aggressive search process. Proposals were due Aug. 11, 2023. The state planned to select a vendor just three weeks later.
Eight companies submitted proposals. One, Computer Power Systems of Illinois, leaned into the sense of urgency.
In its proposal, the Columbia, Ill.-based CPSI lauded the Idaho project as “a paradigm shift towards a data-rich environment that opens up new possibilities for education.” The company outlined a multipronged plan to work on several pieces of the upgrade at once, and finish the vast majority of the work by December 2024.
“To achieve this timeline, it is crucial that work commences by Oct. 2, 2023,” CPSI wrote.
That didn’t happen.
The state and CPSI didn’t even have a contract until June 2024.
It’s unclear what happened between the summer of 2023 and the summer of 2024 — especially when the state knew it had to spend the federal money quickly. The State Board deferred questions on the procurement to the state’s purchasing division. The state Department of Administration, which oversees purchasing, did not respond to EdNews’ written questions.
How the project fell apart
CPSI finally began work on July 1, 2024, with a compressed schedule. In its contract, the company said its goal was to “accomplish approximately 70% of the project work by mid-December 2024.”
That didn’t happen either.
However, the State Board defends CPSI.
“We believe CPSI was working in haste to complete the bulk of the work as quickly as possible given the deadlines,” the board said, in response to a series of written questions from Idaho EdNews.
In early 2025, a new federal administration changed the spending rules, again and again and again.
On Jan. 21, one day after President Donald Trump was sworn back into office, the feds gave Idaho an extension. They said the state could spend pandemic aid money up until March 28, 2026. Coming just a week before the ISEE spending deadline, this extension seemed to show up in the nick of time.
On Feb. 19, the U.S. Education Department made another change. Federal funding remained available, but the state would have to shell out its own money for ISEE upfront, then apply for reimbursement.
On March 28, Education Secretary Linda McMahon cut off funding entirely.
When that happened, the feds clawed back $8.5 million Idaho expected for ISEE.
Idaho had spent more than $6.2 million — mostly federal money, but also $111,000 of state money, spent after the feds adopted a reimbursement model.
The entire $6.2 million went into the first, internal phase of the upgrade. The state has not rolled out any ISEE improvements to schools. With the upgrade on hold, schools will still be working with the outmoded data system, indefinitely.
Why schools want and need an upgrade
A decade ago, Will Goodman was Idaho’s school technology officer, after stints in the Bruneau-Grand View and Mountain Home school districts. Now the Boise School District’s chief technology officer, Goodman is well aware of the weaknesses of an aging ISEE.
When a new student shows up from another district or charter, all the more common in the age of open enrollment, Boise cannot instantly access their academic history. It can take days to get this information.
After students take Idaho’s standardized test, Boise teachers must go into the portal to flag special education students who took the test. This manual task takes teachers away from working with special education students.
Boise schools can see how individual students fared on the state’s K-3 literacy screener. But it takes weeks to get the aggregate numbers that show how Boise compares to other districts.
There’s a similar lag with financial data. Schools can see their average daily student attendance, the number the state uses to carve up school funding. But schools can’t see immediately how attendance will translate into funding, so they can’t plan spending accordingly.
After 15 years, ISEE is rife with time-consuming, accumulated quirks. Goodman and his peers at the West Ada and the Coeur d’Alene school districts have ample examples. Glitches in tracking and doublechecking high school graduation rates. Redundant reporting requirements for Title I, a federal program supporting low-income schools. Redundant, time-consuming reports.
It all contributes to those 1,500 hours of annual staff work in West Ada — done largely by hand and at the administrative level. And it gets in the way of fixing things at the local level.
“An average day for me is, basically, what’s the biggest fire, and I’m working on that,” said Evey, the West Ada data solutions analyst. “If I have fewer fires, then I’m spending more time on quality.”
Jay Prickett, Coeur d’Alene’s technology coordinator, had high hopes for the upgrade. For Coeur d’Alene, and other districts that have to pitch supplemental levies every one or two years, a public database would be a “boon.” That’s on hold, while local officials continue to work through some old reporting headaches.
“I think we’ re just kind of resigned to our fate,” he said.
Where does Idaho go from here?
For all practical purposes, the feds’ money is gone.
On June 26, the U.S. Education Department gave states another chance to apply for lost COVID funds. States needed to apply by July 3 — a seven-day turnaround.
State Board Executive Director Jennifer White didn’t believe that provided enough time to revamp a project that had been stalled since March. White was also concerned that the feds would only reimburse states’ expenses — she didn’t think the State Board had enough cashflow to pay ISEE expenses upfront, and she was worried that Idaho would be on the hook if the feds decided not to pay the state back.
“I was not willing to obligate the state under those circumstances,” White said in an interview.
The state’s vendor, CPSI, is in wait-and-see mode. “We remain committed to the success of the ISEE Modernization Project and look forward to re-engaging as soon as funding becomes available,” the company said in a statement. CPSI President Michelle Elia declined an interview request.
The State Board is trying to figure out how to break up the upgrade into “bite-sized manageable pieces,” White said. It’s a balancing act. White doesn’t want local officials stuck in perpetual traning, but she also wants to keep the critical ISEE project moving.
A Plan B upgrade also needs a Plan B funding model.
With the feds’ money out of the equation, White might seek philanthropic help. She has ruled out asking for help from the 2026 Legislature.
Just as well, said Horman, the legislative budget committee co-chair. She doesn’t think her colleagues have any interest in funding a bailout. “It makes sense that (the State Board) would have to figure out an alternative path forward.”
This is shaping up to be a tough year for budget requests. Little and the governor’s staff have told state agency heads to turn in “maintenance” budgets with no add-ons.
Even in flush times, ISEE would be a tough ask. Programs like early literacy resonate with parents and politicians. A longitudinal data system doesn’t.
“(It) is some of the most challenging work that any of us do, and it is the least attractive to sell in terms of its importance,” White said.
More reading. Following the ISEE dollars: What we learned.
