October 2005 — Industry Perspective
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The Evolution of Student Information Systems
One example of the results of our customer outreach efforts has been the development of a single sign-on for LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). Several districts, especially the larger ones, requested that we provide this support for LDAP. Now, no matter what application a district is using, it will only need one username and password to access its computer network’s directory services.
Present and Future Trends
NCLB has also changed the core functionality
of the student information system,
because educators are now required to
track students’ mastery of state standards.
In fact,more and more schools are using
mastery of standards instead of regular
grading to mark student progress—
a trend that is a vital part of the future of
student information systems.
California is one example of a state that is moving toward showing the progress of standards mastery instead of using percentages or “A, B, C” scores. Yet, while some system developers have only recently caught on to this trend, Pearson has provided technology that allows schools to track and report on a student’s mastery of learning objectives (standards) for 20 years; we are now supplying that data directly to teachers for daily use and insight into student performance. Schools can also decide what data to make available to parents as part of their school-to-home communications.
Another important trend that we see is interoperability. Student information systems now need to take information from different sources such as the media center, special education, or Head Start. In answer to this need, the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF; www.sifinfo.org), a nonprofit standards initiative for the K-12 market, is steadily building interoperability among vendors.
SIF has made major headway in four categories: transportation, food service, library, and student information systems. The concept calls for real-time access, shared data, the capacity to easily determine what application is the source of specific data, and the automatic movement of that data to other applications that need it. Several hundred districts are beginning to realize this vision, although still in a limited fashion.
Not all applications and vendors are participating in the SIF initiative, and in some cases, SIF is not yet ready for some vendors or applications. However, the federal government has declared that states will use SIF for reporting data, and this mandate will make a huge difference in how quickly SIF becomes the standard for interoperability.
As for the immediate future,we believe that student information systems should continue to expand their capabilities, becoming systems that can incorporate both student information and performance management. While many districts are still purchasing both student information systems and data analysis as separate modules, accountability requirements and the push for data-driven decision making require that the school information system not only serve as the core for all data gathering and analysis, but it also must be customizable and easily integrated so that it can change as districts’ needs change. That is the next step in the evolutionary process.
Robert Darby is VP of product management for Pearson School Systems. Tim Hughes is senior product manager of assessment/data analysis solutions for Pearson School Systems.
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