Fall Issue Front Page <<

Issue: Fall 2011

New Visions Maps Out Technology Introduction into
77 NYC Public Schools with STELLA^®

Susan Fairchild

"Schools are complicated places," says Susan Fairchild, Director of Data and Applied Research at New Visions for Public Schools. That's an understatement for any school district. It's certainly true that New York City Schools face the complexities of constantly changing graduation standards, tight budgets, understaffing, and large, at-risk student populations. In 2007, New Visions was selected to help 77 New York City schools that serve 38,000 students achieve an 80% graduation and college readiness rate.

New Visions starts with the premise that data matters; that when educators can see patterns they can intervene and make students successful. "For example," says Fairchild, "we know that kids who aren't doing well at the end of their freshman year are at higher risk of doing poorly during the next three years of high school or even dropping out. The sooner those high risk students are identified, the better the chances of helping them improve their grades and stay in school."

New York City schools agree that understanding student and school progress through data analysis is important and mandates that every school have a data specialist. The data specialist is often an assistant principal or teacher that is comfortable with numbers and technology. In order for schools to meet the 80% graduation rate mark, however, the entire school community – teachers, administrators, parents, and students themselves – have to be aware of metrics and trends. In Fall of 2010, New Visions rolled out a new technology platform to its 77 schools that provides all school constituent groups easy access to clear, actionable data.

Students and their parents are most interested in how they are doing in relation to the general student population, how their grades are trending, and whether they are meeting graduation requirements. Teachers and administrators are interested in both the status of individual students and aggregate data that describes academic department or overall school achievement. "We've created clear benchmarks that help people answer the question ‘What's going on?' and have contextualized the data," says Fairchild. "And we're providing a technology platform called DataCation that makes it easy for everyone to quickly access and digest the information that's most important to them. Tools and portals are organized by interest group; administrators, guidance counselors, teachers, students, and parents."

DataCation reports on things like the College Readiness Metric (which is calculated using classroom and standard test scores), attendance, marking period averages by subject area, credit accumulation by semester and subject area, Regents test scores by subject area, and scores on 8^th grade standardized tests. Portals organize the data so that users can quickly find and digest information they need.

All technology roll-outs present challenges but DataCation's roll-out was complicated by the amount of data it would deliver and the number of people that would be using the system. Fairchild took advantage of isee system's Custom Mapping Services. Chris Soderquist, of Pontifex Consulting and leader of the service, helped her map out DataCation's roll-out and required training. Soderquist used STELLA, Systems Thinking software from isee systems, to help Fairchild visualize the system in which DataCation would operate. "Chris helped us take a traditional logic model of the roll-out and turn it into a Systems Thinking map so we could see what we had to do to successfully diffuse the software through our 77 schools."

The STELLA maps that Fairchild and Soderquist created yielded four main benefits. "We immediately discovered how easy it is to be in the weeds on a big project like this," says Fairchild. "STELLA helped pull us out of the weeds by constantly reminding us of our game plan. We could look at the maps and say, ‘This is what we're supposed to be doing."

"We also realized that if users didn't feel comfortable with DataCation, they wouldn't use it," continues Fairchild. "We knew that we'd need fast feedback and that, once we received it, we'd have to turn around fast changes. If people saw that their feedback was used to improve the technology, they'd stay hooked and use it. If they thought the technology was stagnant, they'd lose interest."

Third, the STELLA models pointed out that New Visions couldn't underestimate the importance of capacity building. "We saw that training was going to be critical," says Fairchild. "And we understood there was never going to be a point when our training initiatives would end. At no point in time do things stand still. The school community is constantly changing; teachers, administrators, and students come and go, data and reports will be added, graduation requirements will change."

Last, and maybe most important, STELLA maps gave Fairchild and Soderquist a way to help other stakeholders in the DataCation roll-out understand the process and leverage points. "The maps are very visual and everyone could see how things were going to work," says Fairchild.

DataCation has now been in use for a year and Fairchild reports that it is being widely used. Fifteen hundred people have been trained by 1.5 full-time staff, a herculean effort. Analysis of usage across schools and user communities will help Fairchild and others at New Visions boost usage even higher.

"We see that data specialists and guidance counselors are using most of the available data portals but teachers are very focused on the grade book," says Fairchild. "That's to be expected but we need to be sure that they're exposed to other portals and data that will help them improve instruction."

Moving forward, New Visions will use STELLA maps to explore interim and longer term issues with DataCation development and diffusion. "We're exploring a comparison of adoption across schools and thinking about how to look at student performance in a way that accounts for differences between students."

The real measure of success will be high graduation and college readiness rates at the 77 New York City schools New Visions supports with data analysis assistance. That kind of change takes time, but it's fair to say, that those school communities now have widespread access to data that will help direct school and individual student achievement.

Fall Issue Front Page <<