January - 2010
SQL Reporting with NWEA Map Data
Kerry Juntunen from Hermantown School District has taken
the first steps to integrating district MAP test results
into their assessments data warehouse. MAP tests
have their questions aligned with Minnesota Content
Standards. Districts that offer the MAP tests to
their students would like to observe/correlate those
reading and math results with the Minnesota standardized
tests. To date, we've been able to download the
district's MAP data and have created a new SQL table on
the server to house that data. Work on integrating
the MAP data to SQL Reports will begin following some
mentoring from the district MAP contacts and faculty.
E2T2 Grant Training
The first training session for assessments data analysis
was held Jan 22 at NESC. Topics covered by ARCC
included an operational overview of assessments data in
Excel and SQL Reporting Services.
An advanced training session has been scheduled for March 8th.
February - 2010
Reporting Assessment Results on Transcripts
We're
here to help! Data cleanups have been done for
Aitkin, Barnum, Hermantown and Littlefork.
Wrenshall is on deck. Transcripts for those
districts have been configured to post MDEs new
suggested results of 'Pass' or 'Not Pass' for best
attempts at the GRAD math, reading and writing
assessments.
If
you'd like to get a jump on the crowd, please contact
Dale Nielsen. Work is being done on a first come,
first served basis. There's quite a bit of behind
the scenes work that needs to be done and this is not a
'quick and easy' adjustment, so for what it's worth,
'now' is the best time to be doing this, rather than
waiting until June and noticing that transcripts aren't
in compliance with new mandates in Statute 120B.30.
As
might be expected with any new mandate, there are a few
issues for vendors to cope with. We have cases
open with Infinite Campus to resolve an issue with
selection of the best testing attempt for transcripts.
Also regarding selection of defined test results to be
reported on transcripts. Every effort is being
made to bring the application into compliance before
issues reach 'critical mass'.
November 2010
Loading Data Into Infinite Campus
It's
that time of year again. If you want/need help
loading your assessments data into Infinite Campus
please schedule with me. It's 'best practice' to
use this coordinated effort because there have been
changes to the system since last year. If you try
loading data on your own and based upon assumptions
there will likely be a lot more cleanup needed, than if
we do the data prep and loading together.
It
isn't expected that on top of everything else you have
to do, that you memorize the data mapping and uploading
process. All you need to remember is 'call Dale'.
This WILL save time for you!
I've
worked with about 1/2 of you to date and am wondering
what's up with those of you from whom I have not heard.
If
you haven't been through the process before, a live
walk-through will take about 3 hours. If you
have been through this before, the process usually takes
no more than an hour and a half. ....I
hope to hear from you soon!
UPDATE (11/10/2010) - Infinite Campus Score
Import Wizard
While
working with one of the ARCC member districts
Friday, Nov 5, it was discovered that the Score Import
Wizard was malfunctioning due to faulty Java
communications within the server routine for importing
assessments source data.
A case was opened at Infinite Campus and the
problem has been resolved in Version 1024.6 (implemented
Tuesday, Nov 9)
Contact
campus_support@arcc.org
(copy & paste)
if you have questions or concerns.
December 2010
Student
Record Keeping for GRAD
The 2010-2011 Assessment Procedures Manual is
out and there have been important new changes that
affect how to report tests on transcripts.
The
rules and examples for record keeping and transcript
reporting can be found starting on page 14 of the new
Procedures Manual.
If you don’t yet have the manual it can be downloaded
from:
http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/Accountability_Programs/Assessment_and_Testing/DAC_Corner/Policies_Procedures_Guidelines/index.html.
Recommendations To Districts Using Infinite Campus
1.
If you aren’t already, consider storing MTAS and other
Alternate exams in Infinite Campus.
2.
Alternate exams used to meet graduation requirements are
not to be reported on transcripts so you’ll now need to
use a double-entry system in Infinite Campus.
When a student evaluated for meeting graduation
criteria a GRAD
record needs to be manually created on
the Student Detail>Assessments tab for the subject
(Math, Reading or Writing) and given a Date, and a
Result; ‘Pass’ or ‘Not Pass’.
3.
In System Administration>Tests, uncheck Scale Score for
ALL defined GRAD tests for ALL years.
This element is no longer to be reported on
transcripts. As always, I’m available for assistance with any
of this.
When to Load GRAD Retest Data Into Infinite Campus
Once in the Fall, and once in the Spring.
I’ve worked with all of you at one time or
another.
We’re using Infinite Campus Assessments for Parent
Portal reporting and for Transcript reporting.
That’s pretty much ‘it’.
Any other assessment analysis is done with SQL
Reports or the CDs I gave to each district.
It’s important to have the data up-to-date prior
to printing transcripts at the end of each school year.
It’s much easier and quicker to bulk load several
months of retest data than to manually create those
records as they dribble in.
I know that there will always be exceptions, for
instance, when a student transfers districts.
What happens when you manually create test
records is that your interpretation of the data may
differ from that in the downloadable source files.
The Infinite Campus Score Import Wizard ‘ain’t
that smart’ - If retest source data is imorted with the
intent of updating records, and it doesn’t EXACTLY match
the data you’ve manually created (most commonly the
‘Date’ field) the result is that the student will have
multiple records that imply the same retest, but for
example, on different days.
That means a lot of unnecessary housekeeping.
Another strong reason to work with Dale Nielsen
on this is to keep your data standardized.
If data isn’t consistent, internal reports are
rendered useless because of synonymous definitions that
get used for report filters.
The decision is yours – I can help you out in the
Fall and Spring, or you can do all of the retest entry
yourselves.
Since readership is relatively unknown for this
newsletter I’ll take it upon myself to contact each
district about this.
Graduation Data List Excel Workbooks
Districts are able to look up graduation-related scores
by using the
file at the Test Results
Download tab of the Educator Portal (choose “GRAD” at
the “Select Test Group” drop-down box and then select a
grade to get all the graduation-related test records for
all students in the grade - see below). This file gives
the graduation-related test administration history for
students who are officially enrolled in their schools as
verified by the MARSS system.
This is very
useful information!
Contact Dale Nielsen if you’d like some Excel
tips to make these workbooks easier to use.
These files reflect MDE’s information regarding
graduation status for high school students. Files
are available for each grade level (9 thru 12) and
available by school year (09-10, 10-11, etc.).
Please read the contents of each worksheet completely so
that you’re comfortable discussing/using these
workbooks. If you're interested, I can show you a
few Excel tips/tricks to make them more manageable.
These workbooks from the MDE Educator Portal are not
‘the final answer’ about a student’s graduation status
(explained in FAQs). They should be used in
conjunction with other existing district data to
improve/complete your view of whose on track for
graduation or not. Other existing data could/would
include the test results reports from Infinite Campus.
Data
Presentation and Reporting:
Assessment data loaded
into Infinite Campus is generally pretty accurate but
may not be complete (ie, MTAS tests are also linked for
determining grad status). Other factors that may
determine graduation status include, attendance, grades,
behavior and demographics. ARCC is in the process
of acquiring Tableau
(click to view URL)
report
templates that will be able to report on all of these
factors in a ‘Students at Risk’ report. We’re also
acquiring several other templates including one that
compares NWEA MAP (and other) tests to MCA tests.
These are in addition to many reports that have already
been developed by ARCC in-house data specialists.
ARCC
has been working with Tableau for over 3 years and
advocating that districts consider the Tableau data
mining product for the past year and a half.
Tableau integrates smoothly with Infinite Campus as well
as many other data sources (Finance, Human Resources,
etc.) and appears to the end user, teachers, for
instance as an internal Infinite Campus process (like
our SQL Reports). Users like that because they are
already familiar with Infinite Campus.
You’ve been collecting
data for years. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to
make sense of it? To us at ARCC it makes much more
sense to use Tableau than other 3rd
party vendor products because of feature comparisons
with other 3rd
party products & services, ease of use, your existing
support channel with ARCC, price comparisons, and the
association that Tableau has with Infinite Campus.
Excel is a great tool and
was useful to cut our teeth on, learning about pivot
tables and pivot charts, but we’ve also learned that
it’s limited in its data mining capabilities and
recognize the need for more sophistication in a
dedicated data mining application. This
'evolution' has been a nearly constant mantra since we
began development of assessments analysis. Several
districts have expressed interest with at least one 3rd
party vendor touting their own version of data mining.
The short
story is that to make that work, you'll have to export
data to them. Other vendors don't know your data
the way we do and actually rely upon ARCC to support
THEM in acquiring your data!
The support team at ARCC
feels ready and able to encourage a move away from
Excel, toward Tableau as the right tool for leveraging
the massive district data stores among student, finance
and human resources housed at ARCC. We know your
data better than
anyone
else and will be here to help and guide you. This
is just SO important to remember if you find yourself in
a support situation with another vendor.
Data
Warehouses:
Kevin Lindquist and I
built a SQL database about 3 years ago. We call it
the ARCC Assessment Data Warehouse and it’s used to fuel
the SQL Assessment Reports used by your district.
Currently only MCA II data is stored for most districts,
but it can also store MTAS and GRAD data, etc., as well
as NWEA MAP tests. (...more to come on that also!)
This data can be merged with the Infinite Campus Data
Warehouse for the purpose of data mining. Updates
to our data warehouses are done automatically every
night. Our assessment data warehouse stores a far
more comprehensive data set than can be usefully housed
in the Infinite Campus database and this is why teachers
can see all that beautiful strand data in their SQL
reports. By loading ALL assessments data you would
have a great pool of information from which to draw that
is seamlessly integrated to Infinite Campus data, linked
on person ID numbers and state ID numbers.
I
hope this doesn’t sound too much like a sales pitch -
I’m more of an evangelist. All of the ‘data guys’
here at ARCC know what works in the data department and
this just makes good sense...
