What You Want
Take an exclusive look at the state of student information systems and the executives who love (or hate) them.
ARRA’s accountability measures are causing districts and states to reassess the state of the enterprise data systems that generate accountability reports.
The most critical system is the student information systems (SIS), which is already used by 69% of districts as the primary NCLB reporting tool. Data Warehouses (DWS)—with their ability to generate insights from data mining—are the other critical tool in this arena.
A Tech&Learning-sponsored survey of 300 school district IT professionals on SIS and DWS was recently released. The 118-page report explores the current state of the market for these systems.
Included in the findings are some useful insights about the fate of the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), profiles of the districts that are embracing the efficiency of single-sign-on portals, and whether an open-source student information system (SIS) has a fighting chance in the current climate.
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OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
A potential efficiency measure that other industries have embraced is open-source solutions. In the education market, there are currently at least two open-source SIS projects under way.
The survey found only tepid interest in this approach. The largest response was “Maybe” at 43%. Of those willing to provide a definitive yes/no response, only 18% said they would consider it.
With likely purchasers, as they get closer to making a decision, most of the “Don’t know” moves to the “No” group. This would indicate that open source in this part of the market has an uphill fight ahead of it. Given time and some visible success, this dynamic could change, but for now it appears that districts are uncomfortable relying on open development for their core data systems.
In Conclusion
District IT teams are required to provide data that justifies the massive influx of investment their districts have just received. The data tells us that the SIS is the primary system for generating these reports. Knowing that your SIS is SIF-enabled will allow you to pull this off in the time allotted. Being able to provide seamless access via single-sign-on will insure that the systems get used and generate results. Open-source systems are not viable yet as an option—districts are going to need to work with their current network of education service centers, state agencies, and software vendors to sort out the rapid response to ARRA.
SIF—IS ARRA THE PUSH OVER THE TOP?
SIF’s popularity has grown considerably in the last five years. 45% of districts now name SIF as their preferred interoperability solution. ASCII transfer (28%) and ODBC (19%) trail far behind. SIF compliance is now an important criteria when districts buy a new SIS (92% of likely buyers ranked it as important).
SIF’s momentum will probably accelerate under ARRA as districts struggle to gather data from the various instructional systems they invest stimulus dollars in. This trend rests on three critical and related features of SIF: efficiency, reliability, and speed.
Rather than writing a series of custom application interfaces using ODBC or relying on stitching data together by hand with ASCII files, districts that use SIF can get the best of both worlds with SIF. Because SIF has 11 years of development behind it, implementation can be done fast enough to report back to Washington in real time rather than three to five years from now.
It may also be possible that states will rely on SIF or a variant to pull data together at the state level. This has its own set of challenges, but the states face the same data-consolidation challenges that districts do—just on a different scale.
It would assist the market if policymakers blessed one of the standards. If districts are freed from a plumbing issue, it will lower the barriers to adopting new systems and encourage change toward more robust reporting tools as a result.
SINGLE-SIGN-ON STATUS—EFFICIENCY IN A TIME OF TIGHT BUDGETS
The proliferation of systems in school districts is causing headaches with multiple-password authentications. Single-sign-on portals address usability, security, and efficiency as Web-based solutions proliferate in schools. The good news is that this approach has a decent penetration already (35%), and another 20% have plans to implement in the next 12 to 18 months.
It is easy for teachers and students to be overwhelmed with passwords on several systems. Security lapses when people write down passwords or select easily hacked but memorable IDs. For IT, assigning, managing, and controlling passwords is time intensive and expensive.
The results of the survey are not surprising—the larger and poorer the district (and hence the problem), the more likely they are to have sign-on.
Districts with fewer resources appear to be more receptive to implementing solutions that save money. In this economy, this encompasses all districts.
Single-sign-on implementation is unrelated to the SIS—there is no correlation to the age of the SIS.