In its first public statement on the issue, the California Department of Education last week defended its right to pursue a breach of a data partnership agreement against a Stanford University education professor for participating in a lawsuit against it. CDE’s rationale failed to persuade numerous critics and attorneys who are challenging the agency’s action in court; they say the department’s defense ignored the harm to the public by restricting independent researchers’ use of state data. CDE has threatened to fine Thomas Dee, a prominent education researcher, up to $50,000 and to seek other sanctions against him and potentially the John Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford, where Dee is a faculty adviser. The conflict was the subject of legal wrangling last week in Alameda County Superior Court. A second prominent Stanford education researcher and professor at the Graduate School of Education, Sean Reardon, did feel the chill. Faced with  a similar threat from CDE – a potential $50,000, the rescinding of data he had obtained and the loss of future access to state data – he declined to submit a brief to the Cayla J. case. Heather Hough said that as the executive director of PACE, an independent research center led by faculty at Stanford, USC, UC Davis, UCLA and UC Berkeley, she’s been aware of the litigation clause. She said it has already deterred partnership agreements. “I know it’s a reason why some universities and organizations just won’t sign it,” she said. “The contract language is part of a larger culture in California — a hesitancy around making data available, around sharing evidence. It’s especially problematic because California’s policy framework is dedicated to the idea of continuous improvement,” she said. But that cannot happen if the state and independent researchers are unable to turn out “a lot of research evidence and data analysis about what’s working under what conditions.” In response to an onerous process of getting data from CDE, PACE helped found a new data alliance,  the CORE Data Collaborative. Since 2015, it has enabled districts to share student data and respond more openly and quickly to questions, Hough said. It encompasses 1.4 million students in 93 districts and charter school organizations. “I think CDE has gotten better over time,” Hough said, “but it’s still not easy to get data access, so we created a completely different approach.” It’s difficult to know for sure, but CDE’s litigation restriction in data partnership agreements appears rare, if not unique, for education agencies in California and nationwide.