April 2005 — SETDA
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Decision-Support System Helps Utah Improve Its Student Achievement
Utah has a history of putting technology in place, and then using that technology to help 
its educators and students improve teaching and learning. The current case in point is how the Utah State Office of Education (US'E) is aligning itself with initiatives and programs designed to place the right data into the right hands in order to improve data-driven decision-making at all levels. Part of this process involves creating reports with data derived from SETDA’s Profiling Educational Technology Integration (PETI) initiative into a statewide decision-support system.
The PETI initiative includes three surveys and several site visit documents, including interview and focus group protocols. The result is providing a clearer understanding of the impact technology is having in Utah classrooms and where more assistance may be needed.
Ed Tech Background
Utah serves 486,938 K-12 public school students as well as 22,640 teachers and administrators throughout the state. It serves its 40 school districts and another 26 charter schools by developing the state core curriculum, licensing educators, and assisting with professional development.
Beginning in 1990, the Utah Legislature provided 10 years of funding to build a network infrastructure and provide technology for schools, with the ultimate goal to support improved student academic achievement.
As district offices and secondary schools connected to the emerging statewide network, educators commenced purchasing hardware and software, schools scrambled to address technical support issues, and educators became involved in professional development activities. After the initial round of skills-based training, education technology trainers grappled with how to match teacher needs with the training they were offering. This made it apparent that a personalized feedback loop was needed between teachers and trainers.
Like many states, Utah was looking for a statewide data model and a decision-support system that could simultaneously assist individual district needs and foster the effective use of statewide data to improve assessment, resource utilization and classroom instruction. Because of the Legislature’s foresight back in 1990, Utah has 100% of its schools connected to the Internet backbone through the Utah Education Network (www.uen.org).
This wide area network provides an online pathway to and from classroom teachers throughout the state. With this infrastructure in place, Utah is achieving economies of scale in providing services to its districts and charter schools.
Adding to the services delivered over the network, Utah contracted with iAssessment, the provider of the decision-support architecture, to create the OnTrack online portal (http://us'e.iassessment.org). Initially, Utah created OnTrack to provide district education technology leaders with online survey results from teachers to help inform district decisions on what kinds of technology professional development were needed by each teacher.
