February 2003 — Applications

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Portage Public Schools Touts Excelsior Software's Open Database Architecture Solution

In spring 2001, the district deployed Pinnacle Plus and Excelsior's Gradebook2 to collect and analyze student performance data. In addition, the district continues to use a student information system provided by the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency (KRESA). Based on Microsoft Visual FoxPro, this system supports reporting required by Michigan as well. But, the district sought to improve the system's attendance, grading and reporting functionality. Portage Public Schools also sought to enhance its ability to aggregate student data for longitudinal querying and analysis.

In choosing Pinnacle Plus, Vomastek was confident that the new system would integrate well with the established KRESA system. "The Pinnacle Plus system's data source is open in a standard SQL Server, which provides us with access through both Crystal Reports and Access," he says. The district operates with a 100 MB fiber backbone, enabling Vomastek to manage the Pinnacle Plus system centrally with three servers:

  • One server runs in "Terminal Server" mode to support each school's Pinnacle services;
  • A second server manages teachers' gradebook directories; and
  • The third server supports the Pinnacle Plus DDM SQL database application, which automatically collects and aggregates each school's data for multiyear longitudinal analysis and reporting.

Phasing the Rollout

By introducing the Pinnacle Plus system into the district, Vomastek developed a phased rollout program. Half of the district's schools began using the system during the second semester of the 2000-2001 school year, and the other half began during the following semester. Before the rollout, there were about 100 teachers using individual gradebook applications. And as expected, these educators were hesitant about switching to Gradebook2. "The program offers a high degree of customization and flexibility," says Vomastek. "As a result, the educators' report formats could be replicated, making the transition much easier for all parties involved."

Once Gradebook2 was launched, Portage Public Schools electronically transferred its standards and benchmarks in each core curriculum area to the teachers' Gradebook2 desktop application. This gave teachers the ability to enter standards-based assessment data to be warehoused and analyzed by the newly installed Pinnacle Plus DDM system. In addition, the district was well on its way to meeting its goal of streamlining data entry, as well as increasing the information and reporting power of the data gathered.

Lower TCO

Vomastek factored training and technical support into the district's system choice as well. "Our experience with Excelsior has been a positive one in every sense. They did a great job of creating a suite of applications that serve each type of user. ... There are also different tools for different users, and now our curriculum specialists are using objective reports," says Vomastek. "The benefit for us is that we can reach our goals and implement the system with less training for each specialized group, which has actually helped us lower our total cost of ownership."

During the rollout, the district's teachers received three hours of Gradebook2 training. Subsequent in-service programs then gave a majority of teachers an average of four to six hours of additional software training. In addition, the district continues to provide ongoing professional development in standards-based assessment.