IX–A

Mountains of data are available to educators today. Are you making the most of the data? This presentation offered a timeline and strategies of how district and high school leaders work together to get the most from school data. Explanations and samples were given to describe the process of mining the data from both district and school-level perspectives to pinpoint students at risk. This presentation focused on how attendance, discipline, and performance data are used to target students in need of immediate intervention, students potentially at risk, and students on the road to success.

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• Attendance, Discipline, and Grades—Oh My! A Broad Spectrum for Uses of Data at the District and School Levels (5.26 MB)

IX–B

The Arkansas Department of Education has implemented a unique student identifier system that uses a probabilistic neural-net model to resolve conflicting records for the same student because of name or Social Security Number changes. The system is Schools Interoperability Framework certified, but these unique identifiers are automatically populated into the districts' student management systems without the need for a ZIS at the district level. This presentation was an overview of the system, including the methodology used for entity resolution and statistics on match rates.

IX–C

Attendees learned more about CETPA's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mentor Program. This innovative program provides one on one ratio of student to mentor and offers instruction by some of the top leaders of California's K-12 Technologists. The Chief Technology Official (CTO) training program is targeted to produce qualified California school district CTOs.

IX–D

Exchanging electronic transcripts and student records is easy now! Getting all the issues decided and folks involved is a little harder. The participants in this panel were all involved in getting electronic transcript solutions moving in their states. They discussed what it takes to get all interested parties lined up and ready to sail, including choosing the standard for transcript exchange, planning for implementation, identifying contents of the transcript, and involving all relevant stakeholders, including school district personnel, SIS vendors, higher education, state education agency personnel, and even parents.

IX–E

To meet rising expectations, the Chicago Public Schools has implemented new standards, curricula, accountability systems, and handheld computing devices. These efforts aim to share accountability, improve alignment, and increase efficiency with coordinated goal setting. Instructional improvement is not possible if the technical core of teaching is left to teachers to analyze and change on their own. Teachers need support and opportunities to learn about ways of using multiple measures of student assessment data effectively to improve instruction, individualize learning, increase achievement, and monitor progress. One of the promising responses to this need has been the implementation of the data team process as a vehicle for improving classroom teaching by building confidence and skill in using data.

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• Using Multiple Measures of Data Effectively to Improve Teaching Instruction and Student Learning (11.1 MB)

IX–F

Based on a university-school district partnership, this session's main purpose was to demonstrate the decision making value of combining student transcript, achievement, and demographic data. The session demonstrated six reports to guide decision making for improved student achievement and equity: 1) Course placement appropriateness—to what extent are course (track) placement decisions based on academic criteria?; 2) Inter-track mobility—do students change track placements during high school?; 3) Student intervention planning—identifying and helping under-performing students; 4) Value-added analyses—measuring academic effectiveness of course sequences; 5) Grading consistency—do grading expectations/distributions vary amongst teachers?; and 6) Equity analyses—do course placements and outcomes vary by race, income, or other classifications?

IX–G

In 2001, the government in Qatar began a reform effort of the country's K-12 education system, which was at that time highly centralized with little evaluation and monitoring of policies and processes, and an emphasis on rote learning rather than critical thinking. In this paper, we present a description of the coordinated education evaluation and IT systems used to assess their progress, through information derived from longitudinal national studies at the individual level for administrators, teachers, students, and parents, in combination with standardized test results and with school and higher-level aggregated data.

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• Assessing K-12 Schooling in Qatar (371 KB)

IX–H

Students enter schools, districts, and states daily—where have they been, what history follows them, what are their needs, what linkages do they have to other agencies and institutions? These questions are asked thousands of times each day by educators as they strive to help the students achieve their highest potential. We explored the linkages between the many facets that make up a "total student packet" and how using the Schools Interoperability Framework Specifications along with other defined industry standards can create the interoperability bridges that connect these divides. We demonstrated how this innovative technology is working in several districts across the nation.