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Ring the Bell, School is Back in Session— SPSS Predictive Analytics Help K-12 Administrators Ensure Quality Education, Meet Federal and State Education Requirements
Source: www.spss.com
Copyright SPSS, Inc. 2004
09/28/04

This is a dated announcement. The material in this announcement could be superceded by more current announcements.

Lafourche Parish (La.), Lansing (Mich.) School Systems Among Dozens Nationwide Using SPSS to
Better Serve Students, Administrators

CHICAGO, 09/08/04 — While students were enjoying their summer break, school administrators across the country have been using predictive analytics technologies to make sure education plans for the new school year meet the needs of individual students as well as critical federal and state education mandates. Chicago-based SPSS (NASDAQ: SPSS), with a history of more than 35 years of providing analytic technology to educational institutions, offers products such as SPSS® statistical analysis software and the Clementine® data mining workbench to help dozens of
school systems manage vast amounts of student data, with the goal of developing accountability plans and implementing strategic education plans to ensure their students’ success.

School systems face compliance standards similar to those of public companies— with federal statutes like “No Child Left Behind” being analogous to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Progressive school systems are adapting their student information systems (SISs) to be more like corporate customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Rather than simply storing bus routes and attendance records, schools are using their data to develop individualized student learning plans based on statistical and predictive analysis of test scores and system wide results. Managing the data within these SISs is a critical advantage for school systems as they compete for federal and state funding.

“The K-12 market is held to an extremely high standard of accountability—student performance is viewed as a direct reflection of the school, rather than the student,” said Ken Stehlik-Barry, senior consultant at SPSS. “As school administrators evolve their technology toward CRM-like systems, it’s important that they are able to capitalize on the value of their vast amount of student data. The answer is new technology that allows them to do so without having to be a statistician.”

Divining Information From Data

The Lafourche Parish (La.) School Board, which oversees 30 schools and more than 15,000 K-12 students, wants to ensure that their students receive a quality education, and that limited budget dollars are maximized in working to achieve that goal. They want to measure progress by improving test scores, and then use those test results to enhance learning for students in their region by analyzing test scores of fourth and eighth grade students. In addition, they want to deliver the information that results from this test score analysis to school administrators and teachers, who can put the information to good use by developing strategies
and making decisions that will improve the quality of education for Lafourche Parish students. The state’s “Reaching for Results” reform initiative includes a testing program to improve educational curricula and minimize “social promotion,” the practice of passing students to the
next grade even if they do not have the skills needed to succeed.

Using SPSS technology, the Lafourche Parish School Board compares test scores of individual students against both others in their school and in the entire school system. The school board also analyze the scores against demographic and other available data, then share the reports with educators so that lesson plans can be tailored to address specific areas of need.

"Our students are our customers. We’re using the same powerful data mining technology that for-profit companies use in order to become even more student-centric, and make the improvements to better serve each of our students on an individual basis,” said Chris Bowman, technology manager for the Lafourche Parish School Board. “There is a huge amount of data for us to work with, and we want to make decisions based on an analytical appraisal of data. By using predictive analytic technology, we’re able to use this information to improve education on an individual student level– something that we’ve never been able to do before.”

The Lansing (Mich.) School District has 40 schools and more than 17,500 students under its jurisdiction. Tracking students’ scholastic performance from kindergarten through high school is an important component to ensuring academic success. Most Michigan school districts used a state-designed tool that was not adequately equipped to integrate and analyze the vast amount of information that comprised each student’s file, including grades and scores from a battery of local and national exams.

Lansing Schools are using SPSS® for Windows® statistical analysis software and the company’s
SPSS Text Analysis for Surveys™ to quickly integrate and analyze data.

The schools’ database team delivers reports that help school administrators evaluate a student’s successes and challenges, and moreover, understand which school programs are proving beneficial.

“By using this technology, we’ve improved the evaluation process of our scholastic programs and streamlined our grant proposal process, due to our ability to slice and dice huge amounts of student data,” said Bethany Deschaine, evaluation assistant for the Department of Research, Evaluation and Pupil Accounting with the Lansing School District. “It’s vital that I give teachers data in time for them to help their students. To really analyze data, to get as deep as you need to get, and to get it to the right people as fast as possible, I strongly recommend using predictive analytics technology to unlock the information contained in raw data.”