Background Information
• Missouri has a State Board of Education (members appointed by the Governor), with a
Commissioner of Education. Each district has a local school board that manages the district.
• Missouri does NOT have a statewide student information system. Each district chooses their own
method of managing student records.
• In 1996 Missouri passed legislation that included a new Standards Based Assessment System –
which focuses on the Missouri Show-Me Standards and Curriculum Frameworks.
• The Missouri School Improvement Program manages the accreditation program. Each district is
reviewed once every 5 years. The measures include resources, processes and performance. The
Assessment system makes up the majority of the performance points. -- High stakes
accountability system that includes the performance of ALL kids.
• The opportunity to help organize the data in a useable format and continue a dialogue with the
districts on how to use that data.
• Data collected via a paper form, scanned and provided to the department in a fixed record length
text file.
• A series of scripts are written to output the data into text files. There is a total of 15 tables needed
for each school district. The record layout is predetermined for later use with the software tool.
• The text files are FTP’d to a local NT server. A VB Script is written to read each text file and
place it into a Microsoft Access Database file (*.mdb). When this process is completed there are
525 district level files named with a fixed preface and district code identifier. (example
MAP_001090.mdb)
• Clear Access (a product of Computer Associates) is a relational database tool that is machine
licensed and installed on the local hard drive. The software can be installed on a network, but can
only be used by one individual at a time. The tool can access and use the following database
structures through an ODBC connection – Visual FoxPro Database, Visual FoxPro Tables, dBase
Files – Word, FoxPro Files – Word, MS Access Database, dBase Files, Excel Files.
• It will run on a MAC, but is more complicated and does not support the same features that the PC
version will support.
• The user must do an ODBC set-up process to have the software link to the data source (in this case
the CDROM Drive). This process was chosen for our specific needs.
REPORT
QUERY WRITER
QUERY
RESULTS
DESKTOP
APPLICATIONS
E.G. EXCEL
MS WORD
Exit Report
Drill Down
Quick Select
Re - Sort
Session Number
(Session 1, 2 or 3, Session 3 is CTB TerraNova)
The sort order of the report is determined by the column on the far left
hand side of the report. This report is currently sorted by Standard,
Question Type, and the Session and Item Number.
To sort the report by question type, place the mouse on top of the QT and
click on the LEFT mouse button. Hold the button down and drag the
column to the far left hand side of the page.
Positives
• Data organized in a standard format so additional reports can be generated centrally and provided via a web site.
• Districts have been very pleased with their ability to access and use the data.
On-going Issues
Cleansing of the data
Changes in the software company
Training on the tool (district turnover)
Training on how to use the data
Other vendors using the data with their tools.
Common Student ID
Student Confidentiality issues – requests for the data.
The Volume of data – storage, indexing, backups etc…