Edusoft

"I would highly recommend the Edusoft system to anyone who wants to make a big impact...if you want to do a really good job, you'll lose sleep trying to get everything done, but this allows you to get to sleep a little earlier and accomplish the same thing."

- Gregory Thomas, Science Teacher, Emery USD

Case Study: Edusoft empowers educators The following article was published by two Edusoft clients in the June 2001 issue of the California Small School Districts' Association newsletter. Debbie Pearson and Ryan Robison are clients of the Edusoft Platform, and the article below is their description of how they use Edusoft within their school districts. Data Driven Instruction Debbie Pearson, and Ryan Robison With all of the pressure we currently face from high stakes tests, new standards, and legislated accountability, we as school districts need to bring all of our resources to bear to ensure that students are meeting standards. While we have employed several strategies in the past to become a more data-driven district, it's been very challenging given our limited time and resources. This past school year several small school districts (Pleasant Grove, Wheatland High, East Nicolaus High, and Plumas) in Yuba and Sutter counties, including our own, have implemented a new approach using web-based technology to pursue a standards-based data-driven instructional model. Through this approach, supported by technology, our districts are now able to help prepare all of our students to work towards mastery of the state standards. And we are able to do this without overburdening our existing staff, but by helping them be more effective at addressing the specific needs of the students in our districts and classrooms. Our approach to data driven instruction has three major components, all of which are now enabled by technology:
	1. analyzing data from STAR exams 2. delivering and analyzing the results from interim benchmark testing and 3. enabling teachers to deliver standards-aligned tests and providing them with tools to analyze results for individualization in the classroom.
Analysis of Test Data Data from high stakes tests provide us with a starting point to define a roadmap to target and individualize instruction in our districts for the remainder of the year. While we all know that the data has been available to us, in the past it's been very difficult to analyze and use in an instructional context -- we had to go through individual STAR reports or spend months in front of excel spreadsheets. Now our staff and teachers use a suite of web-based tools to aggregate, disaggregate, compare and see longitudinal reports on student performance from the STAR exams. Having all of this information readily available enables us to prepare for the rest of the year, knowing in advance where to schedule for extra review and additional help, as well as what programs to continue, and which ones to re-evaluate. To make sure this data becomes a useful tool, rather than just a lot of numbers, we now:
	1. provide every teacher with a view of scores for each student in their current class(es) 2. report on the strengths and weaknesses of students at each site (e.g. 8th grade LEP students at the middle school are underperforming) 3. look at data longitudinally to determine the success of current programs.
We recognized early on that involving the entire community was the only way to succeed with this approach. To this end, we now have the ability to share reports on student performance through the web with students and parents. Benchmarking Having a single data point from the high stakes tests gives us a starting point, but we need to be able to monitor progress throughout the year. One way in which we can do that is by administering a set of internal benchmark assessments during the year to provide us with a gauge of student progress before it's too late. We use paper and pencil tests with a low cost scanner to accomplish this -- it's cheap and quick. Our staff then uses a set of analysis tools on the web to measure student progress and district-wide performance on state standards on an ongoing basis. In the Classroom There's no more important arena than the classroom when it comes to improving student performance. A complete approach to standards-based education must impact what goes on in the classroom on a daily basis. That's why we encourage our teachers to align their tests to standards and also provide them with a data-bank of standards-aligned questions which we purchased and continue to augment with our own material. Teachers can generate paper-and-pencil tests through tools we provide them through the web, and the tests can be automatically graded through our scanner. By using these diagnostics and the scanner, our teachers may view and track student performance on standards, generate customized review sheets that target areas of need for each of their classes, and even individualize homework assignments for their students. Teachers are the critical piece in the puzzle for us. That's why we've made sure to provide them with the support and tools they need to be successful. We've heard from our teachers that not only are they saving time but they feel they've received the support they need to succeed with their students. It's not a new process for them -- it's just making the old one more effective. A Culture of Data Driven Instruction The districts in our consortium recognized that an approach and a technology alone would not succeed. We needed to obtain support and buy-in from all the key constituents of the school community in order to be successful. This involved bringing teachers, principals, district administration, the school board, parents, and staff together for their input, and involving them in the process of articulating goals, designing processes, and selecting appropriate technology. Debbie Pearson is the Superintendent of Wheatland Elementary School District, and Ryan Robison is the Superintendent of the Sutter Union High School District. The web-based technology used by these districts was supplied by Edusoft Corporation. 866-4-EDUSOFT. http://www.edusoft.com