|
View PDF Version
 South Dakota Department of Education
Melody Schopp
Director, Office of Accredidation & Teacher Quality
90,000 DDN Campus Students
120,000 SIMS.net Students
Statewide Education Management System Transforms South Dakota
In 2001 Melody Schopp was with the South Dakota Office of Technology working on the Digital Dakota Network project when her team was assigned to evaluate and purchase a district-level student information system. But after seeing the statewide capabilities and the vision of Infinite Campus, the team selected it not only as their district-level system but as their statewide education management system.
The Digital Dakota Network (DDN) was the brainchild of former Governor of South Dakota Bill Janklow. The project was an initiative to advance education, the economy and technology within South Dakota. The strategy behind DDN was to wire every public, private and BIA or tribal K-12 school building in the state with 50 or more students and connect the schools with the latest networking technologies.
Schopp had been managing the teacher training initiative for the use of these technologies when the state secretary of education asked her to investigate a district-level student information system (SIS) for the state’s schools.
Making the Decision
The thing that really impressed Schopp and the RFP advisory team was the vision of Infinite Campus. Instead of looking at it as a district-level purchase, Infinite Campus could centralize their student data at the state level and manage it in one database. Because of this opportunity, the RFP team began to consider a statewide SIS versus the original concept of a district-level SIS.
“Since we were a state with a small student population but a lot of geography, the vision of Infinite Campus made sense to us,” says Melody Schopp, currently the director of the Office of Accreditation and Teacher Quality for the South Dakota Department of Education. “In just under four months, we made the decision to purchase Infinite Campus and had our first four districts in the pilot program using the software.”
The decision to create a statewide system was timely since South Dakota undertook the implementation a year before the NCLB act was effective. The combination of the DDN and Infinite Campus became known as the DDN Campus benefiting educators, students, parents and the state.
Unique Student IDs
All school districts in South Dakota have unique student identifiers (IDs) for their students assigned from the state-level Student Information Management Systems Network (SIMS.net). SIMS.net is the centralized Infinite Campus student information database in South Dakota and includes non-DDN Campus districts.
The key to the statewide system is its ability to assign unique IDs. This ability eliminated the privacy concerns over using Social Security numbers and the variety of identifiers being used by the rest of the districts in the state.
The unique student IDs are assigned to an individual student. This ID and its related data is then associated with the student throughout their K-12 educational career – even if they move within a district or move from district-to-district within the state.
When a student moves, the new school can simply look up the student in the statewide directory and if found, the student’s records are transferred from the previous school along with their previously assigned unique ID. If the student is not found in the directory a new unique ID is assigned. This process frees the new school from re-entering the student’s entire historical education record reducing the duplication of student records for the state. Statewide data integrity is improved by eliminating the duplicate records ensuring more accurate reporting.
South Dakota students also record their unique student IDs on assessment tests. The state can then use a simple matching process to compare the student’s classroom performance with their assessment test results to calculate adequate yearly progress (AYP) status overnight.
“The unique student identifier has been absolutely critical to our success in reporting,” states Schopp. “Now we can track the individual student’s progress from the time they enter one of our schools until graduation all the while understanding their assessment test scores at the individual level and making adjustments needed to help the student.”
State Reporting Eliminated
Through the statewide Infinite Campus solution or SIMS.net, the state DOE eliminated state reporting. SIMS.net uses the centralized information from DDN Campus combined with the non-participating school district’s student data to compile the state’s NCLB report card. This includes other federal reports including but not limited to IDEA, EDEN, NEAP and CCD as well.
SIMS.net eliminated the need for districts to undertake the state reporting process which was a costly and inefficient use of an educator’s time.
“It saved us dramatically on the amount of time and energy we needed to expend for NCLB reporting,” states Schopp. “I can’t imagine what other states are going through by not having a centralized database today and trying to obtain accurate disaggregated data.”
Simplified Federal Reporting
Because of SIMS.net, South Dakota can see populations of students moving from place-to-place, make calculations on graduation rates and conduct analysis of any other data set without asking for the data from the districts since it is all housed at the state level.
“So far for us, to have that control over student data, to take a snapshot and do analysis is a huge benefit,” continues Schopp. “We implemented Infinite Campus one year prior to the enactment of NCLB - we were really lucky to have this capability built into our student information system.”
Prior to the implementation, the state DOE would receive floppy disks from each district and the DOE would have to verify the data, consolidate it into a central location and do the needed analysis
for reporting.
“Thinking back now, I don’t know how we did it,” states Schopp. “Of course there wasn’t the high stakes like there is today with NCLB either, but I cannot imagine the districts sending in those disks, trying to match the data with test scores and then make accurate AYP calculations – it could have been a total nightmare.”
The South Dakota DOE has been able to maintain its pre-NCLB personnel to handle federal reporting. The data is accurate, managed in a secure location and it is available anytime.
“From a state data professional’s perspective, the system has been a lifesaver,” Schopp states. “Our two person department still has to perform the same federal reporting functions as any other state with more personnel and Infinite Campus has been the key to helping us do things other states are not capable of doing yet.”
South Dakota is using Infinite Campus to publicly publish their NCLB report card directly to the Web in real time.
(https://sis.ddncampus.net:8081/nclb)
Infinite Campus manages all of the data required for the report card including teacher certification, assessment, attendance and graduation data as a standard state feature. South Dakota is able to present the data in various ways including recognizing and highlighting distinguished schools.
NCLB Growth Model
On November 18, 2005 U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced a pilot program through which qualified states can submit proposals for developing growth models of assessment following the principles of NCLB. The model is a system of measuring individual student’s improvement as they advance from grade-to-grade instead of comparing the scores from class-to-class. South Dakota applied for one of the ten positions available in the federal pilot program.
“It would have been impossible for us to consider applying for a program like this unless we had the capabilities provided from DDN Campus and SIMS.net,” says Schopp. “The built-in ability to track individual student progress versus gross progress of the class from year-to-year and district-to-district gives us a more accurate way to gauge student performance than the current model used by most states.”
SIMS.net provides the data system being required by the new NCLB Growth Model initiative. It can be used to evaluate individual student progress essential to understanding how improvements can be made to curriculum and instruction so educators provide students with the education they need.
Individualized Education Plans
Following the DDN Campus and SIMS.net implementation, South Dakota decided to standardize all districts on the statewide Infinite Campus special education functionality.
Campus Special Education provides individualized education plan (IEP) management giving the special education professional the ability to create plans, store any needed forms and create progress reports. The student’s team can be assigned and provided the appropriate rights for accessing the IEP whether they are guidance counselors, teachers, or administrators - even external experts
Parents can also be included on the student’s team with the ability to view progress anytime via the web-based Campus Parent Portal.
“Parents feel empowered by having their student’s information available and it has given our technology investment huge credibility within the state,” continues Schopp. “The portal is probably getting more attention than the other parts of the product because it is so visible - including with our state legislature.”
The Department of Education’s special education staff benefit from the centralization of SIMS.net as well. They can monitor activities in real time and generate reports when needed instead of relying on data being sent at various times throughout the school year from each district. This has assured the special education staff of the data’s integrity and timeliness while also reducing their special education data management expenses.
And South Dakota is not stopping with IEPs for students with special needs. They are planning on giving districts the option to create individual learning plans for every student in high school starting in 2006. This will give all authorized teachers the ability to drill down into a student’s learning plan to compare grades with their assessment test scores to provide more effective instruction for the individual student.
Higher Education E-Transcript
South Dakota is preparing to let guidance counselors electronically transmit transcript information from DDN Campus to the state’s higher education institutions. The Infinite Campus E-transcript will be used to send student transcripts for conditional academic admission into the state’s higher education institutions and to automate the approval of the state’s “Opportunity Scholarship.” They intend to provide graduates with early admission into their state institutions including a $5,000 resident and academic scholarship to entice more graduates to stay in the state.
The next step is to collaborate with the state’s Board of Regents to use the same unique student identifier used for K-12 students as the student’s post secondary education identifier.
“Right now, we are assigning our own IDs and the Board of Regents is assigning their own unique identifier,” says Schopp. “For a state of our size, we should be able to take advantage of the DDN Campus and SIMS.net to provide efficiencies for our higher education institutions as well.”
PreK Initiative and the State Legislature
Finally, the state would like to do a better job of providing data to the state legislature earlier. The state DOE would like to understand future student populations by being able to assign a unique identifier at birth for better planning of future kindergarten needs. This information would also help provide an understanding for their preK initiative including how many children are enrolled in preK programs and those that are not.
“Even though it sounds like big brother is assigning an identifier at birth, it will help provide us a better understanding of our educational funding and staffing needs years in advance,” states Schopp. “It seems like it is down the road, but it really isn’t that far off especially considering our current technical abilities and the partnership we have with Infinite Campus.”
Infinite Campus State Solution
The Infinite Campus statewide student information system combines numerous data management functions into an integrated system for ease in managing state-level data access and reporting. Infinite Campus delivers a proven state department of education system including unique student ID assignment, district-to-district student transfers, and electronic transcripts.
For over a decade, Infinite Campus has successfully implemented its solutions for customers of all sizes. Today, Infinite Campus applications manage more than 1.5 million students in 23 states. Infinite Campus customers range from districts with fewer than 100 students to those with more than 100,000 as well as regional consortia, state departments of education, and the federal government.
|
