April 2008 — Features
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On the Road to DDDM
Taking the First Step
JIM HIRSCH, A SUPERINTENDENT with the Plano
Independent School District (TX), who is leading the
district's journey to data-driven decision-making, says
the key to a successful DDDM effort is starting with the
questions, not the software: "Identify the most critical
questions you need to answer about your students to help improve
their achievement, then find a system and a process that will allow you
to answer them. Don't start collecting data, don't start buying systems,
until you have a good idea of what questions you are trying to answer."
In the fall of 2006, the new system finally went operational. Now it handles about 4,000 requests a day.
The program, which has a portal on the front end, is role-based. When a teacher logs in, for example, the portal retrieves the data to build a class perspective for that user, which includes all the information available about the students in the class. When principals log in, they see additional tabs within the portal, which enable them to view adequate yearly progress and Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS) scores for a given campus, as well as other related charts; they can also drill down to individual classrooms. (The AEIS is what Texas calls its set of reports that gathers information on the performance of its students).
Although Plano's data management efforts were roughly at the same stage as Chicago Public Schools', its focus wasn't on data quality so much as tool selection. Users had a certain level of comfort with the data being produced by current systems, so why make changes? The answer: in order to squeeze more out of it.
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Looking Ahead
While both Plano and Chicago are pushing to advance from Stage 3 on the DDDM continuum to Stage 4-from gathering data to extracting meaning from it-Plano already has its business analysis software in place and a willing group of participants to work with the tools. CPS is seeing slower progress in sorting out its data collection issues even while users have begun to put more faith in the reporting provided by the new system. As each district progresses, it will face new challenges discerning what data is relevant, addressing tolerance for change among users, and figuring out how to respond now that data is driving its decision-making.
::WEBEXTRAS ::
For more information on data-driven decisionmaking,
visit www.thejournal.com. In the Browse
by Topic menu, click on Data Management.
Dian Schaffhauser is a freelance writer based in Nevada City, CA.
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