Oklahoma VISION Project
Updated: April 22, 2004
Oklahoma Schools Meet "No Child Left Behind" Act Reporting Requirements with Microsoft Accountability and Assessment Solution
The federal “No Child Left Behind” act places substantial new requirements on educators to track and report numerous educational performance metrics, manage curricula and demonstrate annual improvement in student achievement. In Oklahoma, 10 school districts are using a solution that enables them to meet these legislative demands and more. Intel's Managed Learning System, powered by the Microsoft Accountability and Assessment solution is at the core of the state’s Oklahoma VISION project to deliver innovative curricula over the Web. The end-to-end solution incorporates a data warehouse with rich analytical and data mining capabilities. This is coupled with online course delivery, curriculum management and assessment tools provide by Microsoft Class Server. The result is automated data collection for meeting federal reporting requirements while enabling data driven analysis to support a scientific, decision making process and a closed loop system for continuous improvement.
Challenge
The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act represents a major policy initiative for American education. Student achievement will be judged at the school, district and state level. Those accountable for students' academic achievement could have their funding tied to how students perform in comparison to their peers nationwide. Students must be assessed on academic performance and schools, districts and states will be judged on the achievement of their students.
“The law requires us to assess 95 percent of our students,” says Joe Kitchens, Superintendent of Western Heights (Oklahoma) Public Schools. “And that’s not just 95 percent of all students, but 95 percent of students at the district, school, grade, and class levels. And we have to measure not just individual performance, but also performance relative to ethnicity, gender, special needs, English as a second language, and other groups. To meet these requirements, we have to collect huge amounts of data that we never tracked before. Then, we have to be able to access and analyze that data and set up remediation plans to boost student performance. It’s a tremendous data management issue.”
The 500 school districts in Oklahoma, with some 600,000 students, have an edge in meeting the data management needs of NCLB. In 2001, the Oklahoma Legislature laid the groundwork and provided the funding for the establishment of the Virtual Internet School in Oklahoma Network (VISION) project. To assist in the design, development and implementation of the VISION Project, Oklahoma sought assistance from leading corporations in the technology industry including Dell, Intel and Microsoft Corp. JES & Co., a nonprofit organization that serves education agencies, has played a critical role in coordinating Oklahoma’s efforts. The project, designed to develop and deliver Web-based curriculum to all Oklahoma students, is being used in 10 districts throughout the state.
Solution
Oklahoma has been implementing VISION with an Intel solution architecture called the "Managed Learning System," centered on the Microsoft® Accountability and Assessment solution. The solution simplifies the integration of district information into a centralized Microsoft SQL Server™ data warehouse. The data warehouse supports district and state reporting needs and provides analysis capabilities used to drive recommendations for improving student achievement based on numerous data points collected from student systems.
A key component of the system is Microsoft Class Server, the Web-based K-12 curriculum management and delivery platform. Class Server integrates to the data warehouse and enables online curriculum management, course delivery, and assessments. With data warehouse integration, Class Server information is readily correlated with actual measures of student achievement. Oklahoma schools can track the long term effectiveness of changes to curriculum, resources and teaching methodologies for individuals or any subgroup.
Analysis and reporting can be done by administrators using familiar tools and interfaces within the existing Microsoft Office environment. Information for students and parents at home or for the community is easily and securely shared through the Web.
The solution infrastructure is deployed using eight Dell single processor servers running Microsoft Windows® 2000 Advanced Server with Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0, Microsoft Exchange Server 2000, Windows Media® Player, Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, and Microsoft Active Directory® service.
NCLB has two basic aspects: measuring student achievement and remediation to improve that performance. With VISION focused on the creation and delivery of innovative curricula that addresses the second goal, it was crucial for Oklahoma to develop ways to address the first goal—measuring student performance—and, especially, to tie the two together, so that assessments of student performance under NCLB could drive the curricula that would enhance that achievement.
Using XML Web Services to Integrate Databases
To achieve this integration and synergy, Oklahoma expanded its Class Server-based infrastructure by integrating it with the student information systems (SIS) that record student performance on standardized tests. Intel Solution Services has provided architectural design and project management for this effort, creating a managed learning system that uses XML Web services created with the Microsoft .NET Framework to pool data from the SIS SQL Server database and Class Server SQL database into a unified data warehouse. SQL Server analysis services provide the intelligence to analyze student performance in the variety of ways required by NCLB, and to deliver the data via reporting tools.
“You can’t meet the NCLB paradigm without being able to combine the assets of a good SIS with a great instructional management program, such as Class Server,” says Kitchens. “The SIS data enables you to identify the needs. Then the instructional program enables you to intervene with individual students, sub-groups, classes, or entire grade levels, as appropriate.”
In-Depth Analysis Now Possible
The ability to integrate SIS data, e.g., performance on state standards testing, with Class Server data on student performance in the classroom on those same standards, gives teachers and administrators a level of in-depth analysis not possible before.
“We’re no longer looking just at performance on state standards, but also at what teachers are finding when they assess students on those same standards in the classroom,” says Kitchens. “That gives us a more complete and detailed understanding of student performance. And because the data is updated daily, we not only have access to more data than ever before, we also have access to completely up to date data, so we’re getting a complete and accurate picture.”
Access to reports is guided by Group Policies based on Active Directory. Teachers can see individual student performance scores for students in their classes, but not for individual students in other classes. Similarly, principals can see individual results for students in their own schools, but not for students in other schools. Meanwhile, aggregated data—at the class, grade and school level—is more broadly available to teachers and principals. Students can access their own performance data. Parents—logging in remotely over the Internet—can access the results of their children, as well.
The data-based reports, meanwhile, drive teachers’ decision-making about curricula for their classes and for individual students in those classes.
“Once the needs are established, Class Server enables teachers to make assignments for individuals, groups, and entire classes,” says Kitchens. “Then, the results of student performance on those curricula feed back into the system and enable teachers to further guide the instructional process. We are on the way to achieving a complete loop of assessment, analysis, and remediation.”
Benefits
Enables Realization of NCLB Goals, Requirements
The enhanced version of the VISION project is enabling Oklahoma to take a leadership role in meeting the requirements and implementing the goals of NCLB.
“Thanks to Microsoft Class Server and technical implementation from Intel, we have finalized the integration engine framework that provides the access to appropriate data for implementing NCLB," says Oklahoma State Representative Abe Deutschendorf, who has been working to implement VISION at the state level for four years. “I believe VISION is the first and final solution in the implementation of NCLB.”
Teachers Gain Power to Boost Effectiveness of Instruction
The enhanced VISION project greatly increases the ability of teachers to boost the effectiveness of instruction, according to Kathy Elliott, a Durant (Oklahoma) Public Schools teacher of 23 years who is now assigned full-time to implementing VISION and training her colleagues to use Class Server.
 | The Microsoft-based solution gives us the ability to communicate, to collaborate, to offer the most appropriate instruction to our students based on how they learn and when they learn. This is the key to implementing NCLB—and the key to unleashing a new era in education. |  | | Joe Kitchens
Superintendent
Western Heights School District | |
|
“Typically, if a teacher wanted test information on a student, she had to go to a file cabinet and it was a monumental task to pull together the prescriptive information needed to make decisions about curriculum,” says Elliott. “Looking at the student’s performance in comparison to disaggregated groups was such a huge chore that it didn’t get done. But Microsoft Class Server pulls all of this together for us. The way we can drill down into the data is amazing to me—the possibilities are limitless. With a few mouse clicks, Class Server organizes this information so it’s easy for the teacher to analyze it, access appropriate lesson plans, modify them as needed, and assign them to the student.”
An integral, but often overlooked, aspect of boosting student performance is to provide information that helps teachers become better teachers. According to Elliott, Accountability and Assessment solutions based on Microsoft software do that as well. “The information we can access is dynamic and real time,” she says. “We can look at the performance of an individual, group, or class on a specific lesson plan. If the entire class underperforms on the lesson, the teacher knows to change the lesson or the way it’s taught. This will really help us to better teach for understanding.”
Teachers also gain the ability to share lesson plans and to collaborate on their creation. Elliott says she’s impressed with the creativity that teachers employ—and that Class Server enables them to capture—to boost the effectiveness of lesson plans. For example, to teach geometry, one teacher developed interactive animations in which a crop duster plane flew over Oklahoma farmland with fields cut into the shapes of circles, trapezoids, and so on.
“The Microsoft-based solution gives us the ability to communicate, to collaborate, to understand better than ever before how well our students are learning, and then to offer the most appropriate instruction to them based on how they learn and when they learn,” says Kitchens. “This is the key to implementing NCLB—and the key to unleashing a new era in education."
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