Colleagues,
As teachers, school leaders and supporters of teaching and learning, we’re all working extremely hard every day to make sure students can be successful. No work is more important, so it's always my goal to provide you with the best tools possible to help children achieve.
Ensuring all learners stay on track in their educational journey toward graduation and beyond is certainly a challenge. It requires that students in need of support are connected to the
right
services at the
right
time. But if students do not show obvious signs of risk, how can we intervene before a serious impact on learning occurs? If it’s too time-consuming and complicated to sift through numerous data sources, or if we can’t easily access information about specific interventions that may be right for each individual student, how can we ensure students always get the help they need?
These are some of the many concerns we’ve heard from teachers, principals and others in our District. Over the past several months, members of our Decision Analytics & Information Management team have visited schools and held meetings at central office to learn how we can make academic data available in a much more useful way. We listened
and learned
, and now we’re ready to deliver a solution!
Through our partnership with Bright Bytes, I’m excited to announce that a new cutting-edge tool is coming soon that will make it easier than ever for educators to connect students to the supports they need most,
when they need them
. Having access to data is great, but knowing exactly what to do with it is far more powerful.
In addition to more convenient data access, this tool will deliver something we've never had --
“actionable insights,"
meaning data that comes with specific steps for action. Plus, it will provide greater visibility around District-wide intervention trends to help schools make more informed decisions about resource allocation, strategies and program coordination.
Here are the key benefits:
- Single point of information, eliminating numerous emails & systems with confusing spreadsheets
- Early identification of risk factors for all students
- Direct connection to specific interventions available within the District
- Simple progress monitoring for current supports
- Easy analysis of past interventions & ability to assign new measures
A lot more information will be coming over the next few months, so please be on the lookout for more updates from me and our Decision Analytics & Information Management team, as well as in our weekly notifications. There will be training for school leaders, teachers and central support staff, along with some opportunities for our eager users to get early access. As you learn more, I think you’re going to be just as excited as I am.
We have a tremendous mission to meet the goals of Destination 2025, so I believe anything we can do to help educators be more effective in serving our students is a worthwhile investment.
Thank you for all you do for our students!
-DH
