Poway Unified School District

Name: Poway Unified School District
Location: Suburbs outside of San Diego, California
Enrollment: 32,754 students

Poway Unified School District, a member of the Western States Benchmarking Consortium, realized that they were data-rich and information poor. The district has 31 schools and an enrollment of 32,754 students from the suburbs of San Diego, California. They started by bringing together disparate data sources including databases from transportation, human resources, student information systems, learning management systems, finance and special education departments. One of the first places they focused on delivering the information with clarity and meaning was the teacher's desktop.

"When the API scores come out in California, there is a lot of pressure on teachers," said Tracy Jones, Data Systems Supervisor. "None of the teachers were interested in special programs, because they had to teach to the tests. We are trying to present and deliver data that is useful to a teacher as a guide for instruction. Not to tell teachers what to teach, but to help them make decisions about what and how to teach."

In fall 2002, the district rolled out Total Information Management System (TIM). A teacher can log in to view a class and drill down to a student profile. The data warehouse pulls relevant data from the student information system, human resources, special education, student assessment, and delivers up-to-date, on-command information to the teacher. Teachers can filter by period, course or any of the NCLB filters such as ethnicity, gender, or second language learners to compare achievement and identify strengths and weaknesses. The profiles have current and historical data as well as contact information for the student, parents, and email links to other teachers. With this tool, teachers can begin to use data to drive instructional practices that was not possible in the past.

Instructional Technology Specialist Stacey Campo trains teachers throughout the district to make effective use of this information and provides feedback to the data systems department. She focuses on creating a community of collaboration and support where teachers share strengths and weaknesses. She listens to them and helps them use the profiles to make their tasks easier. After working with elementary teachers, she suggested that the data systems department add a feature to display class information for export to make a parent contact list or do a mail merge.

In her experience, elementary school teachers have a head start on how to use district and state assessment data to impact instructional practices. Most elementary teachers already use differentiated instruction, because they are responsible for all academic areas and student achievement. Traditionally, secondary teachers focus on a subject area and present information at a specified pace. It is up to the students to embrace the knowledge presented. However, with T.I.M., this focus is changing. For example, a high school teacher used the profile system to determine the reading level of the students in his science class. When he discovered that they read below the reading level of the text book he used, he adjusted his instructional materials accordingly. TIM is going help all teachers apply differentiated instruction to improve learning for all students.

Poway Improvement Process