Orange County Public Schools To Improve Data Reporting

• By Bridget McCrea
• 05/13/08

##AUTHORSPLIT##<--->

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) of Orlando, FL, is partnering with Wakefield, MA-based Certica Solutions to help the district monitor and improve the quality of data that is reported multiple times each year to the Florida Department of Education.

A provider of information management solutions to the K-12 education system, Certica is the developer of the Certify software solution, which enables local education agencies to maximize funding, avoid penalties and audits, and reduce costs associated with the collection, management, and reporting of data.

The 11th-largest K-12 school system in the United States, with more than 175,000 students, 175 schools, and 13,000 teachers, OCPS is required to report information to the Florida Department of Education several times each year. The information provides the basis for state and federal funding to districts, and demonstrates districts' compliance with education regulations, such as Florida's class size mandate.

"We recognize that our student and school data is a critical underpinning of many district initiatives," said Roland Moore, OCPS chief information officer, in a prepared statement. "It's important that we have full confidence in our data, and that our data is continually monitored for accuracy and completeness. Certify software gives us the ability to automate the processes of data validation and monitoring, allowing us to spread our workload out across the year and ensure that our data is close to 100% accurate before each state submission period. This will take quite a bit of the cost and labor intensiveness out of the reporting process, and ensure that we receive every funding dollar that our schools have earned."

The school district will roll out the Certify software this spring and make it available to school and district personnel at the start of the 2008-2009 school year. The deployment follows a six-week pilot project earlier this year.

Get daily news from THE Journal's RSS News Feed

---

About the author: Bridget McCrea is a business and technology writer in Clearwater, FL. She can be reached at [email protected].

Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at [email protected].