Texas District Overhauls Data Systems, Automates Quality Checking -- THE Journal

Administrative and Business

Texas District Overhauls Data Systems, Automates Quality Checking

By Scott Aronowitz
11/02/10

Killeen Independent School District (KISD) of Killeen, TX, has moved to overhaul the monitoring of its data with the purchase of Certica Solutions' Certify software. The automated data certification software will track the accuracy and completeness of the district's large, multifaceted database on a daily basis.

Certify provides what the company terms data certification "scorecards," or Web-based systems of monitoring data on a daily basis for errors, which users can then correct immediately before they appear in reports. In addition, the software allows users to monitor data for compliance issues, such as ensuring all requisite content is included, as well as for patterns exhibited by students (e.g., attendance rates, precipitous declines in certain subjects, etc.) that may require intervention. Additionally, the software identifies patterns, exceptions, and inconsistencies in district data and alerts users to such potential problems that could lead to a district being labeled as non-compliant.

Texas districts must comply with Texas Education Agency (TEA) data verification and reporting standards, specifically those set by the state's Performance-Based Monitoring Analysis System (PBMAS), which evaluates district performance and program effectiveness through a combination of periodic reporting requirements of student assessment data.

With the growing number of Texas user districts and the complex reporting requirements they face, Certica has built in to the software pre-configured data validation rules for the state's Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS). In addition, the company offers data certification modules for compliance in areas such as attendance, discipline, course history, special education, PBMAS and sub-population performance.

Said John Evans, chief technology official at KISD, "By using automated data validation rules in Certify to validate the data in the new system, Killeen ISD is saving a significant amount of time. Now, our staff does not have to re-write all of the manual error reports for the new system, and can use that time for other projects. We saw [it] as a way to improve our business processes and streamline data validation."

About the Author

Scott Aronowitz is a freelance writer based in Las Vegas. He has covered the technology, advertising, and entertainment sectors for seven years. He can be reached here.

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