Georgia is using part of its federal Race to the Top education grant to expand a statewide computer system that gives teachers years worth of information about their students at the click of a button.
The information available includes standardized test scores, class grades, attendance rates and reading scores going back five years. Starting in the spring, parents in districts where the system is heavily used also will get access to data on their child.
Teachers who have used the system laud it as a way to help them narrow down where a student might need help, but in its second year system usage in metro Atlanta lags behind that in rural districts.
For example, figures from the state Department of Education show the number of teachers in the Coweta County School District using the system between Jan. 21 and Nov. 19 ranged from 80 percent to 100 percent. Less than 20 percent of teachers in metro area districts used the system during that time. No more than 5 percent of teachers in Fulton County Public Schools used the system, the state figures show.
State education officials say that’s because districts in metro Atlanta have their own computerized information systems and are concerned the state “longitudinal data system” could go away in two years when the Race to the Top money stops.
Fulton schools spokeswoman Susan Hale said a pair of factors have limited teacher usage of the system.
“Fulton has its own data system that teachers regularly pull data from,” Hale said. “In addition, the [state system], until this past summer, was not able to communicate with our student information system.”
Usage in Cherokee County has been higher — 20 percent to 39 percent, according to state figures — but the district’s spokeswoman, Barbara Jacoby, said teachers there also use a separate system.
The state used an $8.9 million technology grant from the federal government to start its system. Since then, about $2.5 million in Race to the Top funds have been used to pay staff to enhance and maintain it.
Robert Swiggum, chief information officer for the Georgia Department of Education, said the state system is being expanded with a mind toward making sure it can be maintained by department staff — with department money — once the grant funding ends.
The range of information available through the system is sweeping.
Principals and district officials can track the performance of individual classes, grades and schools.
In addition to getting scores and attendance rates, teachers can see how their students compare with others in their school, in their district and in the state.
The system offers other information, too.
“I can look and see how often this child has moved,” said Pam Williams, a 22-year teaching veteran in Appling County in southeast Georgia. “That gives me a little bit of a vision of what’s happening with that child.”
Teachers in Georgia long have had access to the data compiled in the system. Getting it, however, was more time-consuming than just logging on to a website and typing in an access code. And it was not compiled in a way that allowed for comparisons.
Williams said having comparison data on attendance has been particularly useful.
“It gives me an idea if there are attendance problems across the whole district or is there something that I need to reach out and do to help a specific student,” she said.
While ready access to such information might bring the temptation for teachers to form snap judgements about a student, Laurie Barron, principal at Coweta County’s Smokey Road Middle School in Newnan, said that tendency would exist anyway.
“The culture of your school determines that, not the data,” Barron said. “Pre-judging a student, not giving them the benefit of the doubt, that’s going to happen regardless of data — if that’s the culture of the building. I don’t find that to be a problem in our school.”
James Platts, an 18-year teaching veteran at Hubert Middle School in the Savannah-Chatham School District, said he has used the system to learn what his students need from him and to prepare for parent-teacher conferences.
“When I look at the records, I’m looking at what I need to do to make that student more successful,” Platts said. “I couldn’t imagine a teacher who knew about the system not using it. I’ll continue to use it as long as I stay in the classroom. It’s too much information not to use.”
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