Government Technology - March 2008 - (Page 39)

he said. “People who can help to improve the curriculum and student achievement.” Creating Interoperability New Mexico CIO Roy Soto said it was a challenge to determine the best way to collect and consolidate data. “New Mexico is no different from any other state. We have 89 school districts, all collecting data in a different form and fashion.” Unlike many other states, New Mexico had been collecting student-level data since 1997 with the STARS predecessor, the Accountability Data System (ADS). But ADS had maintenance and system integrity issues. Before making critical implementation decisions on a new system, the state conducted several legislative audits. After careful consideration of the results, the state chose a data warehouse solution and put out an RFP to find a vendor. “We basically took the audits, with specific emphasis on what needed to be fixed, and put them into our request for proposal,” said Robert Piro, CIO of the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED). “Deloitte Consulting presented us with a solution based on eScholar and Cognos.” With eScholar, an educational data collection and analysis tool, and Cognos business intelligence software, Deloitte created a commercial-off-the-shelf system that allows school districts to collect data as they’ve always done. “In New Mexico, there are a dozen or more student information system vendors that have systems in place in one or more of the 89 school districts. The last thing we wanted to do is mandate that they all use the same system,” Benowitz said. With the STARS solution, school districts can continue using their existing systems and produce a flat extract data file that can be uploaded to the data warehouse automatically. New Mexico implemented the system in nine months. “We started the prototype in December of 2005, and then did a pilot with 11 districts in spring 2006,” Piro said. “We’re now in our second year of data collection.” was implemented in less than one year, there was pushback at the district level from some educators. “When you have so many different entities that are basically independent, doing things a certain way, it’s hard,” Soto said. “Some people saw it as, ‘Here comes Big Brother.’” Although school districts could keep their internal systems, the move to STARS required a redefinition of processes for what kind of data to collect and when to collect it. This caused some consternation from districts that already had workflows in place. Daryl Landavazo, New Mexico’s STARS IT project manager, said the districts have been collecting student-level data for some into the STARS system, the state learned it was paying for aides who did not qualify. Beyond that, STARS has allowed schools to generate yearly progress reports, view student assessment reports and check teacher qualifications. “We’ve taken the manual process out of this thing,” Piro said. “We can now determine the status of any teacher in the state. It was something we could never provide before. We had the data but just couldn’t put it together.” Though the STARS system isn’t the first state longitudinal educational data system, Landavazo believes it’s in the top 10 percent of what’s out there now. New Mexico is cur- “We can now determine the status of any teacher in the state. It was something we could never provide before. We had the data but just couldn’t put it together.” Robert Piro, CIO, New Mexico Public Education Department time. “So the assumption was, ‘We’re using data; we know how to report, and we know what we’re collecting,’” he said. “But that’s not always the case.” To combat resistance, the STARS team marketed a proof-of-concept system to both the school districts and the Legislature. “We showed them the proof of concept, and said, ‘This is what STARS is going to be and this is what it can do.’” New Mexico is now in its second year using the system, and the marketing endeavors have borne results. “People are not pushing back now that they are seeing more information come back to them,” Piro said. That’s critical, according to the NSBA’s Flynn. “Educators need to understand that the data collected provides information to help improve instruction. They shouldn’t see it as a punitive tool that points fingers.” Moving Forward Despite the fact that the system has only been operational for two years, STARS has proved to be productive. “One of the things STARS found was an $18 million funding error,” Piro said. New Mexico funds instructional aides for schools, but only certified staff. Once data was uploaded Overcoming Resistance One of New Mexico’s biggest hurdles was change management. Since the system rently working to expand STARS so it can track students from prekindergarten to higher education and offer an educational portal to teachers for accessing educational data. “We now have a lot of impressive data in the warehouse,” Landavazo said. “We want to create a business intelligence tool where teachers can log in, look around and grab the data that is pertinent to them.” Landavazo describes it as a My Yahoo-type page where teachers can intuitively access reports that can help them improve student achievement in the classroom. Soto is pleased with STARS, and he believes New Mexico has created a model that other states can follow. “I think we’ve done it for less money and we’re further ahead than anyone else,” he said. The system was implemented with an initial $6.5 million budget, and it received legislative funding infusions of $2 million and $2.5 million in the two years since its inception. “But you have to have an understanding of where you are going and how long it will take to get there,” he said. “Sometimes people want results overnight, and that just doesn’t happen.” KAYT SUKEL IS A WRITER BASED NEAR FRANKFURT, GERMANY. HER WORK HAS APPEARED IN THE WASHINGTON POST, GOVERNMENT HEALTH IT AND HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS. 39 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - March 2008

Government Technology - March 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Scene Four Questions for... Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers Let's [Not] Get Physical No Data Left Behind Conservation King Community Drug Test Reinventing the System Better Late Than Never Closing the Deal Spectrum Products Personal Computing signal:noise Digital Communities The Expanding Focus of Digital Communities The Digital Imperative Hot Fusion Redefining Municipal Wireless Made in the USA Bridge Detectives The 2008 Agenda

Government Technology - March 2008

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