July 2005 — SETDA
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Using Data Systems to Meet AYP: Vermont
- Experience and qualifications
- Technical solution
- Financial impact
- Ability to implement solution
- Professional development
From the scores, the top three proposals were invited to a presentation that was scored by a larger audience, and two vendors were selected from the evaluations. Those vendors were required to facilitate a 25-day hands-on trial period for the use of their software. During this assessment period, several different users were able to test the two products with demonstration data and by filling out an evaluation form. Also, during this phase of the evaluation, the project team assessed the management tools for each of the products.
The evaluation team came to a consensus-based on the evidence from the scoring of the three-phase evaluation-that TetraData (www.tetradata.com) of Greenville, SC, should be awarded the contract to develop a data warehouse for the VTD'E and the VDC.
Steps to Implementing a Successful Data Warehouse
The warehouse phases. The implementation of the data warehouse has been divided into two warehouse phases and two professional development phases. The first warehouse phase will create a statewide warehouse that is built on educational data residing at the VTD'E. This will include student demographic data and parademographics such as adequate yearly progress (AYP) information, student assessments, and educator data. During the second phase, the contractor and the project team will focus on building the district's data portion of the warehouse with two pilot supervisory unions. The data that will be loaded will be additional student and teacher demographic data, local assessment data, school and student program data, and local surveys.
The professional development phases. When the first phase of the warehouse is built and underway, the professional development program will begin with the contractor providing professional development to the consortium and the department. The plan is to coach one trainer for each of the member supervisory unions and 10 employees of the VTD'E in the technical aspects of maintaining the warehouse. Once a cadre of trainers is developed, the VDC personnel will support them as they train educators.
When the second phase of the warehouse is complete, the department and the consortium will be working with Education for the Future (http://eff.csuchico.edu/home), a nonprofit initiative located on the California State University, Chico campus that focuses on working with schools, districts, state departments of education, and other educational service centers and agencies on systemic change and comprehensive data analyses that lead to increased student learning, to train educational leaders on how to use data to improve their schools. This is a crucial part of the training for the use of the data warehouse.
The most important part of this project, however, is not the construction of the educational data warehouse, but the fact that a group of educators from both the state department and the field have come together to build a tool that will help improve schools and individual student learning through the use of data. Now, to ensure that this project is successful, it is essential that the leadership of both the department and the consortium help to instill a culture of using data to improve education throughout Vermont.
Bill Kimball is the program director for the Vermont Data Consortium and the technology director for Lamoille South Supervisory Union in Morrisville, VT. E-mail: bill.kimball@morrisville.org
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