Data tracking and analysis supports Indiana district goals

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The website of Carmel Clay Schools in Carmel, Indiana, has an entire page devoted to the 2008-2009 accomplishments of the students in its 15 schools. There are 21 entries alone for that school year, beginning with 92% of students in the district are at, or above, standard for ISTEP+ English/Language Arts.

It’s clear that a district which takes such pride in past accomplishments would also continually work towards future goals. One way that Carmel Clay Schools is doing so is by providing educators with immediate access to reliable student data.

“Our past data warehouse and reporting system experiences never fulfilled our district’s vision of how data could be used. Only power users had the background knowledge to extract needed data,” said Christi Cloud, technology specialist for Carmel Clay Schools. “After implementing Pinnacle Insight, we immediately saw an increase in use of data throughout the district. Principals, central office administrators, department chairs, ESL and Title I teachers, and counselors were all using the system to monitor student progress.”

Pinnacle Insight provides administrators the ability to review and share reports about class trends and predictive indexes for the district’s more than 15,000 K-12 students. It allows use of data to plan instructional programs and identify individual student needs. This extracted data also serves as the foundation of the district’s approach to Response to Intervention programming.

The program pulls data in from multiple external sources through SQL language on the back-end, while providing a user-friendly interface on the front-end. Administrators can modify or create unique dashboards for each user within the district.

“Shortly after Pinnacle Insight was available to district users, we noticed the nature of support calls were shifting from queries about technical problems to requests for more data and reporting capabilities,” continued Cloud. “Our users were empowered and eager to see data in new ways to make better instructional decisions.”

Carmel Clay Schools plans to offer educators and parents direct access to student information through classroom and parent portals.