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In the Ballston Spa Central School District in upstate New York,
the administrative future of schools has already arrived.
Ballston Spa -- a district of 4,200 students and five schools
-- is a pilot site for a technology industry initiative to build
software systems that break down the traditional administrative
barriers between different school departments. Now, Ballston Spa
school district information flows seamlessly from department to
department and building to building, and soon, it will flow freely
from schools to homes. Precious time is saved. Decisions are made
faster. But best of all, says district database manager Jayson
Crair, decisions are based on more accurate data.
"It's pretty exciting -- we're literally on the cutting edge,"
says Crair. "Now I can create reports that can be sort of run
on the fly." Better yet, he says, because the data are immediately
available to so many different school people, district administrators
no longer have to rely on others to find numbers or run data analyses
for them. They can do it themselves. Says Crair: "That's the way
it should be."
Programs that talk to each other
Across the country, the push for accountability and efficiency
is creating a demand for better ways to collect, organize, and
analyze data -- not only test scores, but information vital to
district programs for transportation, food services, finances,
athletics, personnel, and more. In many school districts, of course,
you'll still find transportation directors using paper charts
and three-ring binders to track hundreds of bus routes or cafeteria
directors poring over stacks of forms to pinpoint a problem or
identify a trend.
More and more, though, administrative software programs are
hitting the market to manage the increasing duties of school administration.
Some of these programs offer virtually limitless potential for
analysis and sharing of data. A school finance program can alert
school officials immediately if expenses are rising faster than
expected; a transportation package can keep track of the spaghetti
maze of bus routes; and cafeteria software can accurately track
inventory and what foods students like and dislike.
Yet transforming a district's administrative tasks into a free-flowing,
high-tech format is rarely easy. Even in districts already using
administrative software programs, one of the biggest headaches
is that the various departments in the central office often operate
like little information fiefdoms: Different software programs
for different departments are configured in ways that make it
impossible to share data.
That was the frustrating reality in Ballston Spa, according
to Crair. Because each department had administrative software
that couldn't "talk" to the software from other departments, the
district office did not have immediate access to student information
stored at school buildings -- and principals did not have easy
access to central office data. When a student's address was updated
in one department -- transportation, for example -- it wasn't
necessarily updated in another. As a result, the transportation
department sometimes had a different address for a student than
the student's school or the district's food services department
had.
There were other problems, too, and wasted time was likely the
biggest one. "Previously," Crair recalls, "and this is a fairly
common problem with districts in general, ... when a child enrolled
in one of our schools, we had to send a fax to the bus garage
with the address and all of the information about the student.
There was lots of duplication of paper, faxing, rekeying, and
extra work."
How it works
All that has changed in Ballston Spa -- largely because of the
Schools Interoperability
Framework (SIF), an initiative by the technology industry
to create software systems that can talk to each other. Fierce
competitors such as Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Sun Microsystems, and
Oracle are unlikely partners in this effort to ensure that all
administrative software packages used by schools can share data.
Crair says the SIF model will allow each school department to
choose the software it believes is best for its tasks; at the
same time, the district is not tied to a single vendor to achieve
compatibility.
In Ballston Spa, student data are now entered once when a new
student enrolls in the district. The information can be input
at the school building, central office, or transportation office.
Once entered, the data are available to everyone with an appropriate
security clearance -- the librarian at the school the student
will attend, for example. Because information is no longer entered
in several different places by several different people, Crair
believes the margin for error in data input has diminished.
On the other hand, a single data-entry mistake can spread like
a virus to all other departments. Crair says he does not see that
becoming a big problem. To begin with, he says all data are double-checked
before being entered into the system. Furthermore, now, if any
school official with the necessary security clearance catches
a mistake, that person can correct it online, and the accurate
data are immediately updated for all departments. In the past,
corrections were not always passed along to other departments.
The software core of Ballston Spa's administrative system includes
a student-information system called Open
District by Chancery Software. VersaTrans
by Creighton Manning is the district's transportation system package.
According to Crair, the district also uses Microsoft's SQL
Server and Windows
NT Server.
Student information is entered through Open District or VersaTrans.
In turn, Chancery Software, Creighton Manning, and Microsoft provide
an interface agent to allow the different software applications
to talk to each other. This year, the district will be adding
a cafeteria software program (Lunch
Express by DataTeam Systems) and a curriculum system (Perfect
Copy by Advantage Learning Systems) to the network, as well
as a program to allow parents to access school databases from
home computers (K12Planet
by Chancery Software).
Let the ASP do it?
As schools struggle to find new ways to collect, analyze, and
share reams of data, some businesses are attempting to fill the
void in creative ways. One revolutionary approach is to use what
is known as an application service provider (ASP). In ASP systems,
districts do not install and maintain administrative software
on their own servers. Rather, they rent an application that is
delivered to them via the web from a service provider. School
officials simply use a web browser to do their work on the site.
Because the software, server, and school data are maintained and
hosted by the vendor, this approach can keep costs down and simplify
support issues, according to advocates of this approach.
Because school districts do not control the data in such systems,
however, there are legitimate security concerns with using an
ASP. Also, because these are web-based applications, school officials
can find themselves in situations where they are unable to accomplish
tasks quickly because of traffic jams on the web.
Stacey Boyd, a former middle school principal who is now president
and CEO of Project ACHIEVE,
an education ASP based in San Francisco, says her company maintains
a sophisticated Oracle database that regularly updates information
for school districts across the country.
Boyd contends that regularly updating information "requires
[information technology] expertise that schools don't have." She
says that is especially the case in small to medium-sized districts
that can't afford to hire teams of information technology specialists.
Boyd says she believes school data are no less secure at an
ASP site. "We've got it doubly backed up at two different sites."
And what if the company went out of business? "[The schools]
would get the data back," promises Boyd.
Proceed with caution
ASPs aside, there are cautionary notes for school districts
thinking of automating their administrative systems.
To begin with, any new system -- whether it be for transportation,
personnel, food services, athletics, or a combination of everything
-- should be overlaid on current processes and controls for doing
business, according to Shawn Brown, a software consultant for
OpenPlus International, Inc., in Austin, Texas. Brown, who has
helped school districts develop high-tech solutions to administrative
tasks, says the software should adjust to the needs of the workers
-- not vice versa. Says Brown: "In most places, you can't just
rip out the old accounting system."
Alan Whitworth, executive director of information technology
for the Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky., says
his district struggled with that problem after purchasing a transportation
software package.
In this highly automated district, software programs are used
for food service, student scheduling, grade reporting, purchasing,
budgeting, and a host of other administrative tasks. But transportation
has posed a challenge. The district's school choice program allows
families to select the school they want their children to attend.
Keeping track of which students are on which buses is complicated
-- especially since some students ride to bus depots, where they
transfer to another bus. But the transportation software the district
was using couldn't adapt to the complicated depot system.
"The bottom line is that it was not working," says Whitworth.
"We haven't been able to automate that [system]."
Beyond the nuts-and-bolts operational issues, software programs
must incorporate the existing ways of doing business for another
important reason, Brown says: In most places, official processes
and controls for tasks such as accounting and transportation cannot
be changed without school board approval. A software program that
forces school officials to change some processes or controls could
violate board policy. Furthermore, Brown says, federal and state
laws govern how schools do business. School officials must be
aware of those laws before putting a new administrative software
system in place.
Bill Gambill, deputy superintendent for finance and technology
for the Georgia Department of Education, adds that it is "absolutely
critical" that local districts also have administrative systems
in place that can transfer data to, and receive it from, the state
department of education. This is especially important in this
era of accountability, Gambill says, when state departments of
education will be demanding more and more data from local school
districts.
In addition, schools should take some basic, commonsense steps
before agreeing to purchase a particular administrative software
package or service, says Lee Wilson, vice president of marketing
and business development for Chancery Software -- one of the companies
involved in the SIF initiative. Wilson's advice:
1. Schedule an on-site visit to a district that already
has the product or service. What problems has that district encountered?
Are its administrative processes and controls similar to yours?
Wilson recommends that a diverse group of educators go on the
site visit, including teachers, technology coordinators, and principals,
all of whom should be given the opportunity to talk to their counterparts
in the other district. Says Wilson: "You want to make sure you're
not solving one person's problem while creating a problem for
someone else."
2. Look for software tools that will solve day-to-day problems
for the people creating the data, such as teachers, nurses,
school secretaries, cafeteria supervisors, school athletic directors,
and principals. If their needs are ignored, the data might never
be entered -- or it will be less accurate and comprehensive.
3. Look for a vendor that is attuned to future trends.
But Wilson warns school officials not to request a revolutionary
system that would be difficult for the vendor to create. Chancery
does not respond to unrealistic requests, he says; you should
be suspicious of companies that do.
Protecting data
In any high-tech administrative system, security is a major
concern. Many kinds of school data -- such as employee performance
evaluations, student grades, discipline referrals, and records
of kids who receive free or reduced-price lunches -- are highly
sensitive and subject to strict confidentiality laws. Only certain
school officials are supposed to have access to such information.
And that raises a question: Do administrative systems that are
designed to make it easier to share data actually pose an increased
security risk? Whitworth concedes they might pose "a little more
data security risk." But he believes it is a school district's
responsibility to lower that risk. In Jefferson County, he says,
the district has four levels of security -- double the usual two
(URL and password) on most Internet sites. "You have to know a
lot to get into our system," he says.
Still, in some districts, hackers find a way to infiltrate.
In a Wisconsin school in 1998, a student hacked into confidential
school administrative files after peering over the shoulder of
a teacher's aide who was logging onto the system.
Stan Peichel, principal of Ramsey Elementary School in Minnesota's
Anoka-Hennepin School District 11 near Minneapolis, is well aware
of the security responsibilities imposed on schools as they put
more data online and link everything together. His school, also
part of the SIF pilot project, is the primary keeper of its data,
rather than the district's central office. He believes the benefits
of that responsibility far outweigh the risks.
Ramsey uses a Microsoft Windows NT server that operates software
based on an SIF design that integrated three different software
systems, including SASIxp
(a student information system by National Computer Systems), WinSNAP
(a SNAP Systems cafeteria management program), and a library automation
program from Follett Software.
Peichel says having a system that breaks down the traditional
barriers between departments is important in the Anoka-Hennepin
schools, which serve a highly mobile, rapidly growing community
where many students enter and leave the district or transfer between
schools within the district. Ramsey, a K-5 school, has roughly
1,200 students.
Administrative software and the SIF upgrades have allowed the
school to keep better track of everything it does. But the greatest
power to come from the integration of administrative software
systems, Peichel predicts, will be the ability to pinpoint problems
and fix them. (See "Smart Data:
Mining the School District Data Warehouse," September 1999.)
"I have the ability," Peichel says, "to check to see if a kid
had lunch. ... How many students are eating breakfast and how
many are not?" What's more, the principal says, he can use that
information to gauge the importance nutrition plays in school
achievement and determine whether his school needs to consider
offering new or upgraded services, such as serving breakfast on
the days that standardized tests are given.
Or, Peichel says, he can link from his office computer to the
library automation software to see if his students are reading
across broad categories. Are the students reading too much fiction
and not enough nonfiction? Are the students who do well in school
reading similar materials? Those questions and more, he says,
can come from the data -- and he now has access to all of it.
Asks Peichel: "If you have all this data and you don't use it,
what's the point?"
Kevin Bushweller is a senior editor of Electronic
School.
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