Leading K-12 School Districts and State Education Agencies Choose Oracle® to Improve

Oracle Press Release
Leading K-12 School Districts and State Education Agencies Choose Oracle® to Improve Decision Making and Enhance Teaching and Learning

Redwood Shores, Calif. – March 30, 2010
News Facts

Several innovative U.S. K-12 school districts and state education agencies recently purchased or implemented Oracle business intelligence technology and applications to improve visibility into organizational performance and increase operational efficiency, teacher effectiveness and student achievement.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 provided $100 billion to education organizations, including $245 million for state educational agencies to develop and implement statewide data systems to manage and analyze individual student data. Many school districts and state education agencies are turning to Oracle to help build data systems to foster transparency and enable efficient reporting, while improving performance management throughout their organizations.
Oracle K-12 Customer Details

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), the largest public school system in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and in Virginia with more than 170,000 students, selected Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition Plus (Oracle BI Suite EE Plus) as a component of its electronic Curriculum, Assessment, Resource tool (eCART), a teacher resource that provides a single point of access to integrated curriculum, resources and a formative assessment application. FCPS has worked with Northrop Grumman and Blackboard on its eCART implementation. The Education Decision Support Library (EDSL), based on Oracle BI Suite EE Plus, is a data warehouse that supports eCART and helps administrators, teachers and district leaders make more informed decisions about everything from student skill assessments to resource planning. FCPS processed more than 1 million student assessments in its first year of use at more than 200 schools.
Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second largest school district with more than 615,000 students, deployed Oracle BI Suite EE Plus with the assistance of the eVerge Group to provide more than 39,000 teachers and administrators access to student performance and attendance data. With Oracle as the backbone for LAUSD’s “MyData” initiative, the district has the ability to dynamically generate more than 300 reports that give educational administrators and teachers timely access to relevant district- and campus-level data along with the ability to drill down into detailed student information and history. These reports compile a wide range of data including California State Test (CST) scores; Periodic Assessment scores and performance levels in English/Language Arts (ELA); Mathematics, Science and Social Science Attendance data; interim and final marks for all secondary courses and elementary subjects; intervention history; discipline data; English Learner (EL) status and level; the Individualized Education Program (IEP) for special education students and the CA High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) results. The reports aggregate current student performance data and prior year student performance data to show growth or decline. These multi-measure rosters for the teacher are key in the District’s Response thru Instruction and Intervention (RtII) program for instruction that emphasizes the use of data in decision making. LAUSD uses Oracle BI Suite EE Plus to pull data from multiple internal sources, as well as to link to external systems such as the CORE K-12 Periodic Assessment system, intervention strategies and professional development resources.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NC DPI), the agency charged with implementing the state's public school laws and the State Board of Education's policies and procedures, has selected Oracle BI Suite EE Plus and Oracle SOA Suite to support its State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS), which will enable the agency to review and analyze student performance trends. NC DPI will leverage a pre-built data warehouse using Oracle technology for this critical initiative. The first goal of the implementation is to create and automate the Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN) process which requires NC DPI to submit a substantial number of comprehensive categorical data reports to the U.S. Department of Education. NC DPI will use Oracle SOA Suite to integrate with all source systems which contain EDEN and data warehouse data. NC DPI uses Oracle BPEL processes to share and distribute data between various dispersed systems such as North Carolina’s Window on Student Education (NCWISE), Comprehensive Exceptional Children Accountability System (CECAS) and 21 other systems. Further, NC DPI has completed the first milestone in its implementation of SLDS by deploying a Unique Student and Staff system. This shared service enables 115 school districts and approximately 100 charter schools to create, view and consolidate student and staff identification information.
Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS), one of the largest and most diverse U.S. school districts with 134,000 students in Maryland, has selected Oracle BI Suite EE Plus and Oracle BI Applications integrated with the Oracle E-Business Suite enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to deploy a new performance management system to assess organizational effectiveness, enhance program and staff accountability, and drive improved decision-making throughout the district’s schools and central offices. PGCPS will use a pre-built data warehouse running on Oracle technology as part of its implementation. PGCPS’s goals for this initiative are to enhance transparency, as well as foster improved student, teacher, school and staff performance by providing meaningful, predictive and timely data including grades and attendance information. The district will also use its new performance management system to reward employees based on performance through the new Financial Incentives and Rewards for Supervisors and Teachers (FIRST) program.
Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD), the sixth largest school district in California with more than 54,000 students, selected Oracle BI Suite EE Plus to establish a single source of truth for student-related data. In the first phase of the initiative, the district developed a model to provide access to detailed student attendance and enrollment data for cabinet members, principals and teachers. With Oracle BI Suite EE Plus, cabinet members can track and analyze average daily attendance (ADA) figures to make more informed and timely decisions regarding district expenditures. Additionally, principals at the school level are able to draw a better correlation between student attendance and enrollment with teacher performance. Since launching the attendance tracking solution at the principal level in September 2009, SAUSD has increased average student attendance from 93 percent to 95 percent, with the ultimate goal of 97 percent. Once live with cabinet dashboards, the solution will provide an overall picture of enrollment and daily attendance to link the district’s goals to measurable key performance indicators such as a student’s success and also providing the best resources for student achievement.
Supporting Quote

“As a K-12 school district, maintaining student data security is critical. With Oracle BI Suite EE Plus we were able to design a high-performance, secure environment to power our EDSL eCART initiative which will help teachers and administrators make more informed decisions on instruction,” said Ted Davis, director, Enterprise Information Services and Assessment, Department of Information Technology, Fairfax County Public Schools.
"Our district is looking to support our teachers with more effective tracking systems to monitor student performance so that they can hone in on how best to help individual students," said Shahryar Khazei, interim chief information officer, Los Angeles Unified School District.
“Oracle is the infrastructure behind NC DPI’s largest data integration effort for systems which house data on 1.4 million students. We chose Oracle because we needed a business intelligence tool with enterprise-level data integration capabilities that would provide our users with access to data to help them make better decisions,” said Mike Veckenstedt, deputy chief technology officer, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
“We selected Oracle to support our district transformation and student achievement goals. With Oracle, we will be able to transform how we use information in the district and the classroom with the ultimate goal of improving the delivery of teaching and learning,” said Wesley Watts, chief information officer, Prince George's County Public Schools.
“With Oracle BI Suite EE Plus we are able to provide Web-based, personalized dashboards to everyone – from the cabinet level to principals and teachers. This ultimately helps us support data-driven decision-making and transparency in a secure environment,” said Mobashir Mohammad, assistant director of IT, Santa Ana Unified School District.
“The economic-stimulus package of 2009 offers school districts, education consortia and state departments of education a historic opportunity to transform teaching and learning. But the ARRA also presents several significant challenges including how to make the best use of these one-time funds and cost-effectively meet significant new accountability requirements. Oracle helps K-12 school districts and departments of education leverage integrated technology solutions to significantly improve effectiveness and efficiency in measuring performance through increased transparency and access to information,” said Mark Johnson, senior vice president, Oracle Public Sector.


Supporting Resources

• Oracle Public Sector

• Oracle Public Sector on Facebook

• Prince George's County Public Schools Video

• Oracle Solutions Support the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

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Contact Info


Katie Barron Janice Hazen

Oracle O’Keeffe & Company

+703-364-2488 +770-938-4753

katie.barron@oracle.com jhazen@okco.com

   










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