Wednesday, March 28, 2012

The 2012 TELL Mass Survey

The 2012 TELL Mass (Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning in Massachusetts) survey will collect valuable feedback from educators on key educational issues including available time, facilities, resources, community engagement and support, instructional practices and more. The survey is funded through DESE's Race to the Top (RTTT) grant and is a required project for all RTTT districts. 

The online survey is being administered starting today through Friday, April 6, 2012. The survey is confidential and anonymous, and takes approximately 20-30 minutes to complete. Educators can use a unique, anonymous access code provided to schools to complete the survey. The survey, along with up-to-the-minute response rates by district, is available online at www.tellmass.org.

Accessing Blog Archives

Just a reminder to readers that ALL the blog archives are posted online at http://southeastdata.blogspot.com/. I know that since many of the blog's readers only see the content as it gets e-mailed, you might forget that the blog archives are available online as well.

You can search blog posts from the link above by typing in a keyword (box at top of page), clicking on a label (right side of page), or browsing by date (also on right side of page).

For those that are new to the blog, you may wish to go back and browse some of the archives...and for those that aren't, you can go back and revisit topics as they come around again.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Data Warehouse Update Webinar

A Data Warehouse Update Webinar will be presented this Wednesday, March 28, at both 11am and 2pm. (Information about upcoming updates to the EDW were shared in a previous post of an email from ESE.) The ESE folks have requested that districts sign up for only one session as each session is limited to 80 connections. You can signup online at: http://www.doe.mass.edu/conference/?ConferenceID=1295


Friday, March 16, 2012

PARCC Technology Readiness Tool

Massachusetts is a member of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), one of two multi-state consortia funded by the U.S. Department of Education to develop the next generation of student assessments.These assessments are being designed to be given online (see the January 25th blog post entitled "PARCC Assessment Update" for links and information regarding the solicitations for both the development of test items as well as technology infrastructure to support this new system.)

The March 15 Commissioner's Memo shared information about the announcement of the PARCC Technology Readiness Tool, which will collect a variety of data from schools and districts, including information about available devices, numbers of devices, network infrastructure, and personnel. This information will help districts (and the state as a whole) assess their current level of readiness and plan for the transition to these next-generation assessments.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Data Warehouse Update

The following email went out to the Data Warehouse contacts list this afternoon, so I thought I would share it here for anyone who is interested.

Dear Data Warehouse Contacts and Tech Coordinators,

In August of 2011, the DESE released the new EDW v3.0, Phase 1. This new version contained some of the prior information and reporting capabilities and three important advances:
  • The MCAS tables were redesigned for better reporting performance;
  • The user interface was redesigned to make locating reports more intuitive; and
  • Security was streamlined to enable a simpler interaction with the DESE’s Directory Administration (DA) application.
Subsequent to that release the EDW team has continued to work on additional releases, adding reports and functionality, with the ultimate goal being to phase out v2.6.

EDW v3.0 Phase 2, September 2011 included:
  • Additional MCAS reports were released
EDW v3.0 Phase 3, January 2012 included:
  • A new Competency Determination (CD) report
EDW v3.0 Phase 4, March 2012 (estimated completion March 30th). will include the following:
  • February Biology MCAS data
  • SIMS data and reporting
  • SCS and EPIMS data and reporting
  • MCAS reports by classroom
  • Additional report improvements to close the gap between v2.6 and v3.0 MCAS reports.
With the release of Phase 4 in March, MCAS and other state data will no longer be loaded in EDW v2.6. This version is being phased out and will no longer be available by the start of the 2012-2013 school year.

EDW v3.0 deliverables that still need resolution before v2.6 is retired:

  • An MCAS cube or acceptable replacement;
  • A means of assisting districts in migrating locally authored reports and other content;
  • The best tool for districts to use in continuing to create custom reports;
  • An answer to the question: Will districts be able to load ‘local data’, such as formative assessments, into v3.0 or will this functionality be handled by the Teaching & Learning system?
  • And the loading of MCAS data prior to 2006 into version 3.0.
These solutions are still being assessed in view of the ongoing development of the PK-20 and Teaching and Learning systems. Access to existing reports developed by districts and the ability to load local data will remain as is through the remainder of the 2011-2012 school year.

If you have any questions or comments please respond to DataWarehouse@mass.doe.edu or (781-338-6820).