New student-records system clicks with D-11

It sounds simple — a student’s test scores, disciplinary record, attendance rate and more, all in one place.

With another click of the mouse, lesson plans and other activities are available when teachers see a dip or spike in scores that needs to be addressed.

Colorado Springs School District 11’s Deputy Superintendent Mike Poore said he hasn’t seen anything like the district’s new Educational Achievement System; district officials plan to show it to state Commissioner of Education Dwight Jones.

“We are two clicks away from some pretty serious data,” said Greg Wilborn, assessment and technology integration facilitator in D-11.

It’s a first to have that information in one place, said Washington Elementary Principal Terry Martinez, where teachers and administrators can compare student scores on several tests or see scores compared to attendance and discipline.

To gather test score information previously, Wilborn said, teachers might have had to go to three or more sources. Comparisons were limited unless teachers knew how to use spreadsheets and import data.

“You can spend hours on data and sometimes not get that far,” Wilborn said.

Besides data, the system will eventually have features to help school officials give tests and get scores back quickly. There will also be links to lesson plans and resources for teachers.

The district created notebooks full of standards-based curriculum, Poore said, but “they’re not documents that a teacher necessarily pulls down and uses on a daily basis.”

Many of the lessons and resources will be created by D-11 teachers and shared throughout the district, not just within a school building.

Poore said he can imagine sharing between districts to strengthen the resources.

Most of the curriculum information in the data management system will also be available on the district’s Web site, meaning parents can see what concepts students should be learning during each quarter of each grade, said David Malone, director of curriculum and instruction.

It will be nice when a teacher can create a test, find where students are weak and then link to lesson plans, activities, books and other resources to help the teacher help the students, Martinez said.

“Those are the kinds of connections that take hours and hours and hours to discover,” he said.

Teachers don’t always have that time, he added.

The system comes at a firstyear cost of about $1.1 million and is being slowly rolled out to district employees.

Administrators are training some school employees now, Wilborn said, who will in turn train others in their building. Once teachers are trained, they can begin using the system. All teachers should be using the system when a new school year starts in August.

Martinez said he’s not pushing teachers to use the new system, but said when more scores are added — especially Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, a reading test used at the elementary level — they’ll likely look to it more.

“If they want data, this is where they’ll go,” Wilborn said.

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