Business Intelligence for School Districts

Compared to traditional analysis used by corporations, the LEA faces unique challenges to get the most out of their Business Intelligence solutions and must account for:

• more measures
• more years
• more programs
• more guidelines
• more accountability requirements

In 2001 the US federal government passed into law the No Child Left Behind Act which requires states to track each individual students progress. States were immediately faced with significant challenges of:

• Collecting the student-level information required
• Tracking students who enroll in more than one LEA
• Meeting the accountability requirements

The challenge of collecting student-level information from the Local Education Agency (LEA) was typically addressed by implementing new reporting requirements that each LEA must follow to provide the information to the state. The other challenge, was not as easy, since, in order to track students you must be able to uniquely identify them. In most states, the student is given a student ID to identify them at each LEA; thus, if a student is enrolled in more than one LEA he would be given two different student ID's. States were required to develop solutions to assign unique student id's (or unique testing identifiers) to students and match students to their id as they collect information from each LEA. (read more on how QC can help design a unique student identifier solution for your province/state)

The LEA's are held accountable to the state for these challenges and also accountable for implementing programs to improve students progress to meet guile lines of NCLB such as ;95% participation in state standardized testing. Some states have embarked on ambitious efforts to deploy state-wide business intelligence (BI) solutions, while others have given additional funding to LEA's to deploy their own BI solutions to meet the new requirements.

What is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence is the analysis of large amounts of data through the use of organizing key performance indicators (KPI) according to specific business areas. The term is used to consolidate the following into a single business unit:

• Integration- Includes functionality such as; ETL, Infrastructure
• Reporting - Includes functionality such as; Reports, Distribution
• Analysis - Includes functionality such as; OLAP, Ad-hoc Query, Dashboards
• Performance - Includes functionality such as; Scorecard Development, Data Mining, Predictive Modeling
• Process - Includes functionality such as; Visualization, Metadata Management, Workflow, Collaboration, Alerting

BI is a complex representation of the business designed to support decision makers in measure performance. Performance is measured against specific goals identified by external or internal requirements. Through analyzing multiple years of information, decision makers can make data-driven decisions to improve the performance to meet the goals identified.

How is Business Intelligence Different for the LEA?

Business Intelligence should be approached somewhat differently for the LEA. BI solutions were initially designed for corporations to track KPIs such as sales, ROI, and consumer profiles; these measures to not typically apply to the LEA. In fact the LEA must account for:

• more measures
• more years
• more programs
• more guidelines, and
• more accountability requirements.

All of these needs translate into a larger effort to maintain the business intelligence solution after it's implemented. Initial implementations of the solution may initially be no different than other BI solutions. I've seen that, for the LEA who has implemented a BI solutions and integrated it into it's decision making process, it has consumed large numbers of resources working to satisfy the ever changing program requirements, guidelines and accountability requirements.

Of course, it is worth the effort since some of the top benefits of better Business Intelligence are:

• Analysis tools make it easier to identify candidates for in-service training or other targeted programs
• Enterprise reporting tools reduce the time required to gather statistics used to support school and/or student improvement programs
• Data collection and quality processes creates a consistent, accurate and common source of information

Implementation Challenges

Employees working for an LEA are challenged every day to do "more with less", I commend their efforts and recognize the achievements they have made. This "more with less" philosophy which is synonymous with most LEA's has actually given them an edge in implementing business intelligence. The LEA has learned to understand each component of their organization in order to make full use of each and every asset at their disposal. This intricate understanding is what allows the LEA to implement business intelligence solutions effectively without the learning curve required to understand the data behind the decisions.

Costs are also a challenge as BI solutions are complex and require manual resources to implement and maintain. Thankfully, most governments have recognized this and there are usually special programs and grants available to schools who wish to undertake these efforts that minimize the costs.

Data quality is a challenge when we begin consolidate information systems in order to cross-reference and analyze the information. Each information systems does not conform to the same standards or requirements and when they are brought together into a single information system for analysis data quality issues are typically identified. Depending on how the BI solution is implemented the data can be resolved at the source or in the ETL process. Appointing business experts within the LEA to perform quality assurance on the data and resolve discrepancies is a good solution to this problem.

The dynamic environment also poses a significant challenge and is considered to be the largest challenge. If proper planning is not made to accommodate change, costs could get out of control. The LEA must meet the demands of both internal and external demands, satisfying these demands will require a BI solution that can change as the demands change (because we all know they will).

Available Solutions

There are a number of available solutions on the market including those from leading vendors such as MicroStrategy, Cognos and BusinessObjects. For a more detailed comparison please read our BI Buyers Guide for Public School Districts.

One solution that has been built by "Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia" called the Education Decision Support Library (EDSL), has done just that. They have customized the software and integrated standard operations. For more information about beds please visit http://www.fcps.edu/edsl. In addition to minimize costs EDSL is also provided as a hosted service by Insystech Inc.

Summary

New directions in non-standard testing methods now used to benchmark performance prior to taking standardized tests create additional challenges to BI. Integrating these new trends into a BI solution will prove difficult so long as vendors of the benchmarking software fail to provide their data in a standard format. Standards in data portability such as the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) should be supported by the BI solution since the trend is to enable the information to be shared electronically.

BI is still a complex and daunting task to take on by any LEA. If you need help deciding on a solution please <!-- var prefix = '&#109;a' + 'i&#108;' + '&#116;o'; var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '='; var addy97919 = '&#105;nf&#111;' + '&#64;' + 'qct&#101;chn&#111;l&#111;gy' + '&#46;' + 'c&#111;m'; var addy_text97919 = 'c&#111;nt&#97;ct QC T&#101;chn&#111;l&#111;gy D&#101;c&#105;s&#105;&#111;ns'; document.write( '<a ' + path + '\'' + prefix + ':' + addy97919 + '\'>' ); document.write( addy_text97919 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> , We have experience in implementing business intelligence for LEAs and can effectively assess your specific needs and compare them against a the solutions available.