March 2008 — Features
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For the past several years, Champaign Unit 4 schools have been operating under a voluntary consent decree that requires them to eliminate unwarranted disparities between white and minority students in academic achievement, discipline, assignment to special education, and participation in gifted classes, among other things. According to Roger Grinnip, the district's director of technology, the driving force behind Unit 4's data warehouse project is the exacting data reporting standards required by that consent decree.
"The ability for students, parents, and educators to have real-time access to accurate data, in order to make data-driven decisions, is critical to our efforts," Grinnip said when the project was announced. "We are confident that SIF is going to enable Unit 4 to streamline a lot of its processes and greatly reduce any possible errors and redundancy in our data."
That consent decree was good news for Harden, whose position was created because of it. And in the end, he believes, it will also be good for his district.
"I guess that's the bad news and the good news," Harden says, noting that Champaign's Unit 4 expects to have the first phase of its DBMS project-the data warehouse-completed by the beginning of the 2009 school year. The interface implementation will follow later that year.
"Because of the consent decree, we really have to make sure that our data is consistent, that our numbers are correct, and that we provide as much access to real-time information as possible to improve upon any type of disparities that might exist. But in the end, how we got there probably isn't as important as that we got there.
"The changes we're making to our systems will allow us to maintain the consistency and integrity of our data, and it will allow parents, students, teachers, and administrators to have the information they need, in real time, to make data-driven decisions. And that's a very good thing."
John K. Waters is a freelance writer based in Mountain View, CA, and a regular contributor to T.H.E. Journal.
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