July 2004 — SETDA
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Idaho: From Dreams to Reality: The Idaho Student Information Management System
Over the next four to six years, Idaho will create a statewide student information and curriculum management system that will feature leading-edge technology and tools that parents, students and teachers can use to improve learning. When fully implemented, every public school in the state will use the system.
The Idaho Department of Education (SDE), the Idaho State Board of Education (SB'E), the governor of Idaho, and the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation (JKAF) have formed a partnership to create the Idaho Student Information Management System (ISIMS). To support this project the Idaho Legislature passed, and the governor signed, House Bill 367, and the parties entered into a 10-year contractual relationship to formally establish the partnership and define their respective roles and responsibilities related to the system.
As defined within this contract, JKAF shall have authority over the design, build and implementation of the ISIMS solution. The contract further authorizes the superintendent of public instruction, on behalf of SDE, to execute vendor contracts related to the ISIMS project. The SB'E will review such vendor contracts.
A 10-Year Effort
The challenge first came in 1995 as one of the main goals of the newly formed State Technology Plan. The Idaho Council for Technology in Learning (ICTL) directed the State Department of Education to develop a statewide system that would use technology to improve student achievement. Long before the No Child Left Behind Act, Idaho set a course to raise student performance by integrating the use of technology in the classroom, aligning instruction and assessment to state standards, and developing a system that would aid both parents and teachers in identifying individual student academic needs. As Dr. Marilyn Howard, state superintendent of public instruction, often said, "We are going to learn to love the data."
By 1998, Idaho was well on its way to achieving a student-to-computer ratio of 3-to-1 thanks to the yearly commitment of the state Legislature to maintain consistent technology funding, as well as a generous technology grant from JKAF. The concept of a statewide student information management system that would also include curriculum management was first presented to the ICTL and JKAF in 1999. By 2002, a partnership of the key stakeholders and professional education groups had been formed. With the signing of House Bill 367, the ISIMS project was officially launched.
Scope of ISIMS
It is the goal of ISIMS to create an integrated "one-stop" education system that includes the maintenance of general student information, the ability for educators to access curriculum resources to aid in lesson planning geared to meeting state standards, and a reporting and analytics capability that lets different types of users gain a clear picture of how the Idaho educational system is performing for individual students and in the aggregate. The system includes three primary applications that consist of the following products:
