(a) To facilitate the identification and tracking of students from school to school and LEA to LEA, and to facilitate and make more efficient the keeping of records, all students shall be assigned a personal identification number upon entry into a Tennessee public school.

(b) To facilitate the identification and tracking of students with active duty military or reserve component parents or guardians from school to school, LEA to LEA, and state to state, and to facilitate and make more efficient the keeping of records, the personal identification number assigned to students with active duty military or reserve component parents or guardians shall be maintained by the department of education.

(c) The department shall:

(1) Create a data entry point that identifies students with active duty military parents or guardians;

(2) Disaggregate data to identify students with active duty parents and guardians and children of parents or guardians of the national guard or reserves as separate groups;

(3) Prescribe a uniform program for the collection, maintenance, and transfer of data that each LEA must adopt;

(4) Prescribe the format for the data; and

(5) Prescribe the date by which each LEA shall report the data to the department.

(d) The information collected pursuant to subsections (b) and (c) shall be utilized as cohort data as a report-only subgroup and not for the purposes of school, LEA, or teacher evaluations.

(e) The department shall establish, to the extent authorized by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g), and any regulations adopted pursuant thereto, a mechanism for a person or entity to have different types of access to the information contained in the database, to the extent that such information is necessary for the performance of a duty or that such information may be made available without posing a threat to the confidentiality of a student.

(f) For the purposes of subsection (e), “person or entity” includes state officers who are members of the executive or legislative branch, administrators of public schools and school districts, teachers and other educational personnel, and parents and guardians.