EDUCATION SOLUTIONS

The Educational Data Tangle | SAMS | Questions

The Educational Data Tangle: and a Solution

Your experience may mirror Tony's (see sidebar quotation): tons of data, not enough actionable information. You're not alone; everyone else is in the same boat. The question is what to do about it.

Your choices are:

Do nothing (not really an option with NCLB);
Design, build, test and deploy a system yourself;
Pay someone else to design, build and test one for you; or
Buy a system that's already working.

Building your own system involves more time and money than you should be thinking about. School districts really shouldn't be in the software development business; it costs too much, takes too long, and is so very risky.

In the same time it takes to nominate and assemble a design committee, your District can have a working student achievement management system from Executive Intelligence™.

For roughly the interest cost on the money it would take to develop your own system, your District can enjoy the benefits of using the Executive Intelligence system.

Executive Intelligence customers have the advantage of pooling their requirements and experience with other Districts around the country. They get a vastly superior web-based product that is managed by professionals who do nothing else. Why spend $2 million and two years to develop and staff a new home-grown system when you can rent an even better system for a tiny fraction of the cost?

In just a few weeks' time, any District can have an integrated view of student, curriculum, teacher and assessment data.

Leaders will use the Executive Intelligence™ system to quickly get accurate answers.
Reports that take months will now be done in seconds.
Difficult-to-use data mining tools of the past will be replaced by Executive Intelligence's easy-to-use reporting interfaces.
Measurement and testing staff will discover critical success factors as well as patterns for failure.
Instruction staff will be able to track and monitor the results of programs and teaching strategies.
Professional development staff will determine training needs based on factual teacher-level information.
Principals will better manage teachers and students by having student-, teacher-, and building-level views of data.
Teachers will have detailed student-level knowledge at their fingertips to help drive classroom instruction and learning.
Parents can have detailed information about their students' achievements and needs.