Software helps educators understand student needs.
Press Release Summary:
Designed to simplify analysis of assessment and curriculum data, Dynamic Reporting Suite allows teachers, principals, and administrators to spotlight learning areas that deserve attention without searching through stacks of reports or analyzing overwhelming numbers. To use Suite, teachers and administrators log onto NWEA's Web site. Program provides academic growth information and growth norms, all related to how child is doing on continuum of learning.
Original Press Release:
Northwest Evaluation Association Introduces Online Tool that Simplifies Data Use
The Dynamic Reporting Suite, a business intelligence solution, helps educators understand individual student needs, and provides a big-picture look at classroom, district data.
PORTLAND, Ore., March 8 / -- Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) is introducing this week the Dynamic Reporting Suite, a major breakthrough in providing data in an easy-to-understand online format. Designed to simplify the analysis of assessment and curriculum data, the Suite allows teachers, principals and administrators to spotlight learning areas that deserve attention without searching through stacks of reports or analyzing overwhelming numbers. The Suite offers this affordable, analytic capacity to K-12 education districts of any size.
To use the Suite, teachers and administrators merely log onto the Dynamic Reporting Suite on NWEA's Web site. The Suite graphically displays key information about student learning in a highly readable visual format. Educators can choose to view more specific details to better understand student achievement trends and to plan instruction for each student's unique needs. The reports' visual usability means educators take only a fraction of the time they had been taking to quickly understand significant amounts of data in the reports.
"These reports offer a major change in the way school districts receive data and then put that data to work," says Mike Patterson, vice president of technology at NWEA. "We've accomplished a leap forward in providing information in a graphically elegant manner that will make it a far simpler task to put it to use in the classroom and at the individual student level."
Key to the program is NWEA's emphasis on high-quality data targeted at increasing student growth and proficiency. Data aggregated through the Dynamic Reporting Suite are from NWEA's unique Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment system that includes academic growth information and growth norms, all related to how a child is doing on a continuum of learning.
The Suite allows users to easily print customized reports and graphs that can include student performance data relative to growth, norms and state proficiency.
NWEA built the Dynamic Reporting Suite on MicroStrategy(R) Inc.'s Business Intelligence Platform(TM). The platform provides superior analytics, user scalability, and user-friendly reporting features. Because the Suite works through NWEA's interface, districts can afford to access the robust student data and reports through the Internet.
"We made the Dynamic Reporting Suite a cost-effective tool for any district size in keeping with our mission to help all students learn," says Patterson. "It will be an asset to any K-12 setting in which educators are interested in using technology to improve student outcomes."
For example, teachers can immediately understand their students' progress toward their individual growth targets, and toward meeting state proficiency standards. Additionally, teachers can get a snapshot of the academic diversity in their classroom, and spotlight areas in which students need support. They can also see which students are on track to be proficient in reading, math, or language arts, and can identify how education practices are affecting student growth.
The Suite also makes it simple for teachers to create customized reading lists for students, targeting both reading ability and interests. Teachers can share the lists with parents for at-home reading emphasis and to guide summer reading.
For principals and building-level administrators, the Suite focuses attention on areas of possible concern by highlighting the proportion of students who are projected to meet growth targets and state proficiency standards.
At the central office administrative level, the Suite provides information through NWEA's Leaders' Edge tool. This enables administrators to disaggregate the growth data at any level. With this insight, administrators can evaluate the effectiveness of school programs and policies, and how best to allocate resources.
Administrators also can compare and analyze district, school and individual growth targets, spot district or school-level patterns and trends, and quickly "drill down" through groups to pinpoint student data.
The Suite is available for purchase to all education organizations using NWEA's MAP system. Fees vary depending on district size.
About Northwest Evaluation Association
Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) is a national non-profit organization dedicated to helping all children learn. NWEA provides research- based educational growth measures, professional training and consulting services to improve teaching and learning. Partnering with school districts, states and other education organizations, NWEA delivers computerized assessment services to more than 1,800 education agencies and three million students nationwide. Additionally, its Growth Research Database, the most extensive collection of student growth data in the country, provides a rich opportunity for the study of academic achievement. Additional information is available at http://www.nwea.org/
