In Gwinnett County, Ga., the notion that the academic and technology teams should work together is not exactly new. Five years ago, the district integrated instruction and technology with an online portal that houses lesson plans, digital textbooks, videos, grades, test scores, attendance, discipline records, and professional-development tools.
That took a massive collaboration effort, and continues to be the case, as the online system is tweaked and improved.
鈥淲e鈥檙e bridging silos here,鈥� said Steve Flynt, the district鈥檚 chief strategy and performance officer, who works with both the academic and technology teams but has his own team as well. 鈥淏ut the best thing is to not create the silos to begin with.鈥�
A couple of years into that project, the district, a large, suburban system just northeast of Atlanta, took its collaboration a step further by analyzing some of those data鈥攁ttendance, behavior, and course performance, in particular鈥攖o flag students as young as 3rd grade who may be at risk for retention or not graduating on time.
Now, district officials are really pushing the envelope. They want to link the predictive analytics to resources that can help the at-risk students that the system identifies. The hope is that, down the road, the online system would automatically provide suggestions for how to help students who鈥檝e been flagged鈥攆or instance, it would recommend instructional tasks or extracurricular activities that target their particular weaknesses.
鈥淚t鈥檚 one of our more cutting-edge approaches,鈥� said Frank Elmore, Gwinnett County鈥檚 chief information officer, who oversees the technology side of school system operations. 鈥淚鈥檓 not aware of any other school districts that are really putting the resources into standing up what is essentially an entire division aimed at improving student achievement through predictive analytics.鈥�
The end goal is still a way off鈥攖here are some technical and logistical barriers to putting such a robust system in place. But district leaders are confident it鈥檚 the logical next step in their growing academic-technology link.
鈥� Location: Lawrenceville, Georgia
鈥� School System Size: 177,000 Students
鈥淚t鈥檚 got a lot of potential,鈥� said Jonathan Patterson, the associate superintendent of curriculum and instructional support, who is the district鈥檚 academic lead. 鈥淏ut we really have to make sure we鈥檙e able to integrate it in a way that it鈥檚 seamless.鈥�
One-Stop Shop
The district鈥檚 electronic Content, Learning, Assessment, and Support System, or eCLASS, is already many things, as its name suggests: It鈥檚 a repository for lessons and activities, a virtual classroom where students can go to see their assignments, a gradebook, a place to give quizzes, and a parent-communication system. It has online discussion boards and hooks up to Dropbox, so students can turn in their work.
And like technology available in any major school system, some users take advantage of it more than others. 鈥淎 majority of our teachers are using it,鈥� said Holli Brown, one of a dozen eCLASS specialists for the district, who works in schools to help with implementation. 鈥淏ut to what level? That鈥檚 where the difference lies. Some teachers are using it minimally, and some are blowing it out of the water and doing more than college professors do.鈥�
To get more technology in classrooms, the district uses a 鈥渂ring your own device鈥� approach. Students can bring wireless laptops, tablets, and smartphones to use in the classroom, and the district supplements as needed with its own devices. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 feel like every student needs a device at all times to do what鈥檚 best for them instructionally,鈥� said Tricia Kennedy, the executive director for eCLASS development and implementation, who is part of the academic team. 鈥淲e see a variety of instruction happening鈥攕tudents working in small groups, sometimes individually, sometimes in large groups. A rotational model seems to be most effective.鈥�
To Elmore, the CIO, this is a sustainable and fiscally responsible approach to technology. 鈥淚 see a lot of school districts out there trying to drive really hard on 1-to-1 deployment, and they may not be taking into consideration what it鈥檚 going to take to not only deploy a device to every student but how are you going to refresh those devices three to four years down the road,鈥� he said.
There are two major challenges in keeping up a system that brings so many disparate elements together and is being accessed from a variety of devices, district officials say: protecting students鈥� privacy and making sure systems are interoperable, or can communicate with one another.
鈥淥ne of the first questions with any piece of technology is, 鈥業s there going to be any student data stored or transported via this system?鈥� 鈥� said Elmore. School staff can access student data based on their roles鈥攁nd configuring that takes a lot of collaboration between the academic and technical teams.
As for interoperability, the district is part of the IMS Global Learning Consortium, a nonprofit collaborative of school districts and ed-tech vendors who are working together to make it easier for the systems that schools use to communicate. The eCLASS tool complies with the consortium鈥檚 interoperability standards. As Patterson, the associate superintendent, explains, the academic and technology teams work together to push on the vendors who work with the district to use the interoperability standards with their computer programs.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not a small system, so we鈥檙e not going to ask teachers to go to a different website and log in. But a lot of the startups right now, that鈥檚 what they require you to do,鈥� he said.
The technology team is willing to do the back-end work to make the systems talk, but it鈥檚 tough to continually keep that all updated. 鈥淎t this point, we haven鈥檛 gotten to a place where we鈥檙e not going to purchase unless [the product] is certified or compliant, but we do have some contractual language around letting us know a timeline for coming into compliance,鈥� said Kennedy.
From Predictive to Prescriptive
The use of predictive analytics for finding students at risk of not graduating rolled out in the district about three years ago. According to Flynt, the district created its model for determining risk using both external data about what causes students to drop out, from research out of places like the University of Chicago, as well as internal data on the commonalities among Gwinnett County students struggling to graduate.
Teachers in grades 3 through 12 receive alerts at the start of each week with individual students鈥� risk levels. The alerts can also pinpoint what is putting the student at risk: Is it absences? A failing grade on a particular project or assessment? A new disciplinary action? 鈥淚t shows the teacher, in an easy-to-understand graphic [that is] drillable down into the individual student, an indication of [a student鈥檚 risk level]: red at risk, yellow on the bubble, or green not at risk,鈥� said Flynt.
District graduation rates have steadily increased each year over the last several years. However, officials hesitate to chalk that up to the predictive system given the many factors that change across a district. (The national rate has risen over that period, too.)
Now, the district is looking into making it easier for teachers to actually intervene with those at- risk students. Eventually, the system would look beyond attendance, discipline, and grades to track things like how students are interacting with online resources and how engaged they are with the online content. From there, it would send automatic suggestions for interventions. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not easy, and I don鈥檛 know that I鈥檝e ever seen a system that fully does that, but that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e trying to build now,鈥� said Flynt.
Perhaps the toughest part of Gwinnett鈥檚 work has to do with organizing and classifying all of the lessons and activities in eCLASS, and determining how to tell the system what to recommend in what circumstances. 鈥淭he barrier is having the connection between content and identified student need. Some of that is just as nitty gritty as having to physically do the tagging,鈥� said Kennedy. In other words, every piece of content has to be correctly labeled so the system can automatically retrieve it, which takes a lot of back-end manpower鈥攅specially with vendors that haven鈥檛 changed over to the global interoperability standards, said Patterson.
That said, district leaders are on board that it鈥檚 a natural next step in the link between teaching and technology use. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really just a progression for us,鈥� Kennedy, the eCLASS lead, said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e optimizing what technology will allow for us.鈥�
