January -
2009
More on Teacher Rosters for
Assessments
As work continues on the
assessment rosters project it was discovered that this will
be a real challenge. For instance, teachers should
only have access to assessment history while a student is
assigned to them. Thus the need for links to LIVE
rosters and user account student system security measures.
But then, everyone knew that once the desire for analysis
caught on there would be new challenges to meet. It
would be great if we can continue to use Excel as a user
interface because of its low cost and widespread use.
Data Warehouse for Assessment
Records
Discussion has begun about the
possibility of designing/developing a central data
repository or 'Data Warehouse' for assessment records.
Theoretically, this would be a SQL system and would be
indexed to the live student system by means of ID numbers
stored in the assessment records. To test the theory.
a SQL query was written to extract teacher rosters that
contain the teacher's name, class names and sections and ID
numbers for students. This information has
successfully been linked to historical assessment data and
is able to produce a teacher/class roster that contains the
entire assessment history of each student in that class
roster. If the roster extract information is accessed
in 'real time', issues of add/drop will be addressed
'automatically'. This is a huge milestone to hurdle
and a necessary one! Administrators feel that if
teachers can identify those students on or near critical
proficiency boundaries, that they will be able to adjust
curriculum accordingly for those students to help them in
areas where help is needed the most.
February -
2009
Assessment
Rosters Pilot Deployment
Exciting things have
happened! First, the failure - While we've enjoyed
remarkable success using Microsoft Excel to handle the
administrative analysis functions, it's been determined
that this is not the right tool to deploy to classrooms.
A simpler solution was needed as well as one that would
automatically maintain current teacher rosters.
Now, the solution - It was decided to place district
assessment data into a central repository and link that
information via student ID numbers to the core student
system's teacher rosters. The solution is up and
running and being evaluated by Cloquet School District
on Infinite Campus at this time! Teachers will
perceive the new strand-ranked rosters as part of the
overall system. In service time will be minimal -
not more than a few minutes to teach staff how to access
the reports. The reports are
easy to access
and easy to interpret - No foolin'!
What's Next
The new system is in its
infancy and will certainly be refined and developed over
time. There has been discussion about marketing,
but it's still too early to forecast much about mass
appeal of the system beyond Region II. We think
that we have some key people lined up who will consult
with us regarding integration into other student
systems, for instance Power School. Presently the
'online' portion of the system consists of the strand
rank reports and a user guide. There is also a 'drill down'
report of complete student
assessment history. And we'll be refining the back
end too. We'd like to have a relatively quick and
easy way to update the assessment data each time new
data is released by MDE.
March - 2009
Teachers Like
Assessment Rosters!
Cloquet school district
in-serviced their faculty early this month and Karen McKenna
reported back to me that they were excited to get back to
their computers and experiment with the new analysis tools.
She also mentioned that the in-service time was only about
15 minutes. Feedback from the teachers prompted one
small addition to the Assessment Rosters Report - that
addition was to have the Scale Scores shown at all times.
The Teachers User Guide has also
been enhanced and now covers every detail of the SQL Reports
Console, as well as explaining each of the selection
criteria and report descriptions. An interactive table
of contents was also added to ease navigation within the
guide. Teachers find the user guide located with their
reports but you can preview or print the report right from
here! It's located at the right under User
Guides>...For Office 2003>Assessment Rosters.
Who's Using
Assessment Rosters?
The list of districts who now
have Teachers Assessment Rosters includes:
-
Barnum
-
Carlton
-
Cloquet
-
Esko
-
Hermantown
-
Lake Superior
April - 2009
Home-Grown Data
Analysis
Recently, there has been much
discussion about ARCC's 'Assessment Analysis Project'.
It's no secret that we're seeking a least-cost alternative
to data driven decision making applications that are being
sold. In retrospect, exploiting the use of Microsoft
Excel's pivot analysis features was a probably a pretty good
idea to help gain understanding of what's needed by both the
end users as well as from a developmental perspective.
Excel gives end users the
opportunity to 'test-drive' pivot analysis without making a
huge financial obligation. Over the past year many
enhancements have been made to the user interface and the
data model itself resulting in a highly focused approach to
assessments analysis that was primarily designed by the
people who use the product. Recently SQL Reports was
added to provide teachers with access to assessment history.
It now appears that the system is satisfying data access
needs for entire districts. A primary goal on the
development side of this project has been and will continue
to be to listen to feedback from end-users. This is
the 'design team' and the ultimate owner of the system being
developed.
Into The Future
Now that we know how a district
wants to use assessments data history, focus will turn
toward development of a universal access method by defining
a platform-independent user interface. Not
surprisingly, we're looking at developing a web application
to facilitate this. So, why all this work instead of
just buying a data mining 'kit' from a street vendor?
-
To contain expenditure so
that resources can be used elsewhere
-
To provide you with a
solution instead of yet another challenge
-
To give you creative control
over future development of the application
-
To keep the solution SIMPLE,
so that you can use your time elsewhere
-
To enhance communication
among district staff toward a common goal of
achieving/maintaining AYP
-
To create inter-district
peer groups and encourage communication with same
-
To look beyond the
expectations set forth in NCLB
May - 2009
Summer Workshop
Several districts now have access to the assessments data
warehouse but some have elected not to roll it out to
faculty until the start of the '09/'10 school year.
ARCC is participating in an Education Enhancement Through
Technology (E2T2) grant and several more districts will be
coming aboard for assessments analysis during the summer.
Plans are forming-up to hold a summer workshop targeted
for mid-August. The primary focus of the workshop
will be to prepare you to in-service your faculty in the
use of your new assessments data warehouse reports.
The workshop will also review pivot analysis techniques
and afford a forum for you to meet and interact with
your peer group.
This web page is still the most effective means of
communicating with all of you. I hope to have the
agenda details, location and other arrangements in place
in June. Look for the workshop details here and in
the ARCC-A-TECT Newsletter. You'll also receive
personal invitations.
Welcome Aboard!
St Louis County and Cook County school districts
requested access to our new teachers assessment reports.
I look forward to working together with you!
-
Barnum
-
Carlton
-
Cloquet
-
*Cook County
|
-
Esko
-
Hermantown
-
Lake Superior
-
*St
Louis County
|
June - 2009
Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
I've begun looking into the possible use of Microsoft
SQL Server Analysis Services as a cost containment
method for a data mining utility. It's already
bought and paid for in our Standard SQL Server licensing
so 'why not exploit what we have' instead of buying
something new. It's really too soon to say whether
or not this will be the tool that will replace your
Excel assessments analysis workbooks, but it's certainly
worth taking a good hard look.
NWEA MAP Data
Currently, ARCC's new assessments data warehouse is
storing only MCA II and MTAS data. The next
logical data collection to consider will be NWEA's MAP
data. Several of you have suggested that it would
be really helpful to be able to look at the MCA II and
MAP data comparatively.
Welcome Aboard!
Shown below, are the school districts
that requested access to our new data warehouse.
ARCC had its 1st meeting with the IASC districts in
June. ARCC welcomes Deer River, Floodwood, Grand
Rapids, Greenway and Hill City to the growing base of
users. We look forward to learning and working together with you!
-
Barnum
-
Carlton
-
Cloquet
-
Cook County
-
Deer River
-
Esko
-
Floodwood
|
-
Grand Rapids
-
Greenway
-
Hermantown
-
Hill City
-
Lake Superior
-
St
Louis County
|
July - 2009
ARCC Analytics
For some time now, referring to the centralized data
repository as 'ARCC's Assessments Data Warehouse' - long
term, and a real mouthful. Not only that, but
there are more applications for data warehousing than
assessments - Infinite Campus will be introducing their
data warehouse very soon. The short version of the
story is that we've decided upon the term 'ARCC
Analytics' to describe our own data driven decision
making environment because it leaves the door open for
the shape of things to come.
ARCC's First Annual Assessments Workshop
If I think of, or know of you as a district assessments
contact, you've already received an emailed invitation
with a registration form that needs to be filled out and
sent back. You'll also find an agenda attached.
We're requesting permission to grant 4 CEU hours to
attendees who submit a completed presentation eval at
the end of the session.
The workshop is scheduled to take place August 31st at
the Northeast Service Coop. Sign-in starts at 9:00
and we'll hopefully wrap-up by 2:30 pm. You won't
need to bring a computer or a lunch, just your smile
will be enough.
August - 2009
2009 Data Has Been Processed
2009 Excel Assessments Analysis workbooks have been
prepared and sent to all particpating districts.
If you didn't receive workbooks and think that you
should, please contact Dale Nielsen at ARCC.
The ARCC Analytics Data Warehouse has also been updated
with MCA II data from 2009.
NWEA MAP Data
Anyone interested in storing their MAP data in ARCC
Analytics should contact Dale Nielsen at ARCC.
Data Mining Tools
Infinite Campus is partnering with a Tableau dealer in
Colorado. Tableau is a popular data mining and
decision making software application. ARCC
Management has decided to use, and to some degree
support Tableau for use with the Campus Data Warehouse.
Contact Jim Livesay for details.
Research for possible deployment/use of MS SQL Server
Analysis Services [SSAS] will resume in September.
Although SSAS does have some internal charting tools,
it's really more focused on tabular presentation of
data. This is a SQL service that ARCC already
owns, but has not yet deployed. It also differs
from Tableau in that it is 'SQL-centric' in nature -
meaning it will only work with data in an SQL table
residing in an SQL Server instance. So, why pursue
SSAS if Tableau is prettier and more flexible?
...Because SSAS is already paid for and if it can get
the job done it makes sense to explore/exploit its
potential.
September - 2009
Education Enhancement Through Technology Grant
ARCC was recently notified that it has been awarded an
Education Enhancement Through Technology (E2T2) grant.
We are participants in the grant along with the
Northeast Service Cooperative. ARCC's part in the
grant will afford the purchase of a new server to use as
an assessments data warehouse and purchase training for
other grant participants. It looks like we'll all
be getting together again for training at NESC in the
near future. Training will include the Compass
Learning System and ARCC Assessments.
ARCC Analytics Rollout
Several districts have elected to flip the switch on and
have given their teachers access to the new data
warehouse in the form of Teacher's Assessments Reports.
I keep hearing "...the teachers like this." from
my contacts. There have even been a few
suggestions for feature enhancements. Everything's
running smoothly on our end. The transition from
last year's rosters to the current year has been
smoother than expected and work will now resume on SQL
Server Analysis Services (SSAS ).
October - 2009
SQL Server Analytical Service (SSAS)
Q:
What is SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services)?
A: SSAS is a component of MS SQL Server.
Q: What is SSAS used for?
A: SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services) can be used
to analyze data grouped and aggregated into different
formats and views like the faces of a cube. An
SSAS application adds the value of data analysis and
represents the data in the format of On-Line Analytical
Processing (OLAP) cubes, OLAP reporting or data mining
features.
Q: What does this have to do with assessments?
A: SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) enables BI
(Business Intelligence) workers to work on
multi-dimensional data in SQL Server which can be
gathered from different kinds of resources like flat
files to relational databases. We are unaware of
any student system that has the capacity to accommodate
ALL forms of assessment data. SSAS allows us to
place your assessments data into ARCC's data warehouse
and use that data comparatively with the rest of the
data in your student system.
Q: SSAS - What's in it for me?
A: In a word, 'reliability'. Right now,
administrators are using Excel workbooks to analyze data
from MDE. Teachers are using SQL Reporting
Services. The problem with this is that the there
are multiple sources of the 'same' data. If data
in one place changes, but not the other, well....you get
the picture. Also, we'd like to alleviate
dependence upon Excel and work toward providing
administrators with a reporting interface similar to
that used by faculty.
Q: Have you made any progress?
A: Pictures say more than words...
November - 2009
Assessments Data Cleanup in Infinite Campus
During the past few years, the data loading and test
definitions in Infinite Campus have become quite
'creative'. It's both a blessing and a curse that
Infinite Campus provides this flexibility. As
assessment definitions have become more and more
divergent, the 'Test Scores' canned report has become
less and less useful.
Invitations were sent out last month to offer help in
standardizing the test definitions, to correct errant
data, and to load missing data. Many of you
responded to that invitation and have commented that
since cleanup has been done, reports are working again.
Why Can't a 'Passed Individual' (PI) Result Be
Used For All Tests?
This is causing lots of frustration for special
education teachers. But the fact is, that result
only works with certain Minnesota assessments:
Basic Skills Tests and the GRAD Writing Test.
Defining any test in Infinite Campus with a 'PI' result
is possible, but not necessarily meaningful if that
result isn't recognized by MDE as being associated with
a particular assessment, for instance, an MCA II, or a
GRAD Reading, or GRAD Math test.
You'll find your 'best' answers as to what results are
appropriate to use, in the Universal File Format.xls,
score labels worksheet, available for download on your
Educator Portal website page.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns I'll do
my best to help you out. Just contact me using the
information shown under 'Contact' at the top of the left
column.
December - 2009
Compliance with MN Statute 120B.30
Most
of you have probably read about the ruling for posting best attempt
GRAD results to transcripts by now. It's nice to finally
receive some guidance about this topic, but it's proving to be a
double-edged sword.
Why? Because there are new suggested results to post that
require manipulation of source data. The source data files
contain either a 'Y' or an 'N' indicating pass or fail. It
would have been far more convenient for the data uploading process
into your student systems if the source data files contained the new
suggested results.When a transcript is generated,
Minnesota Statutes section 120B.30 now requires that a school,
district, or charter school must place on the high school transcript
a student’s highest assessment score for each subject that has a
required graduation (GRAD Math, Reading & Writing) assessment. MDE
recommends use of the following status codes to represent the
highest assessment score:
Help Is Available from ARCC
In the past these 'status codes' have been, well, all
over the map. So, 'what do your transcripts look
like?' I've been working with districts on an
individual basis to help clean up the assessments on
transcripts and the way they're stored in the student
system.
Are You Up-To-Date?
GRAD retests are happening every few weeks. It has
been my practice to offer loading assistance on an
annual basis up until now. I'd like to help, but I
have a problem: I have no way of tracking retest
information for 20 districts. I'll be more than
happy to offer assistance but you need to stay on top of
this. Of the few districts I've worked with in the
past couple of weeks, none had downloaded GRAD retest
information or made adjustments to their test
definitions.
