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Leveraging Real-time Data to Improve Student Outcomes

Case Study: Region 10

How CCMR Insights and Region 10 in Texas Employed Ed-Fi ODS to Collect Robust, Real-time Data and Deliver a Holistic View of Students’ Progress

Overview

In Texas, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) works to ensure that all high school students in the state have access to high-quality pathways to higher education and career opportunities. Within the TEA, the Division of College, Career, and Military Preparation (CCMP) oversees certification, courses, funding, and reporting for those pathways. The result is an intricate and constant data exchange flowing to and from districts.

Following the approval of Texas House Bill 3 in 2019, school districts must more closely track and monitor student progress toward meeting College, Career, and Military Readiness (CCMR) requirements. Because funding is linked to the success of the students, accurately reported data — and access to data tools that can drive action in real-time — is more important than ever.

CCMR Insights is a web-based software designed to use real-time data to keep high school students on track to meet CCMR requirements to ensure they are set up for success after high school. CCMR Insights is hosted and supported by Education Service Center (ESC) Region 10 (Districts: Grayson, Fannin, Collin, Hunt, Rockwell, Dallas, Kaufman, Van Zandt, Ellis, Henderson), one of 20 service centers established in Texas. ESC Region 10 is committed to delivering trusted, student-focused innovative educational solutions to 130 ISDs, charters, and private schools across 10 north Texas counties and statewide.

The Challenge

Preparing high school students for a changing and increasingly complex world impacts not only the students themselves but also their families, future employers, and the overall community. Data plays a critical role in our ability to illuminate gaps and shed light on where the right change can be enacted for the greatest impact. However, career readiness data is often disparate in nature, as it is derived from various, backward-looking sources. After the time-consuming task of wading through the data, LEAs can determine where students missed the mark by one or two points and can adjust their program for the coming year. While the data helps chart the performance of graduated students and missed funding opportunities, it does little to address the trajectory of currently-enrolled students or identify opportunities to get these students on track and secure funding bonuses. 

CCMR programs are also legislatively led and are tweaked and adjusted often. These adjustments include certification, program types, and funding, requiring LEAs to carry the burden of tracking and adapting their student monitoring and programs to meet the changing requirements — an untenable arrangement for smaller districts and schools where administrators wear many hats. 

Outdated Data Leads to Missed Opportunities

Before the launch of the CCMR Insights pilot program, valuable student data from CCMR programs was reported to LEAs and schools well after the school year ended, creating several missed opportunities, including: 

  • Driving CCMR preparation for current high school students in real-time. 
  • Maximizing CCMR outcome bonus funding. 
  • Improving CCMR A-F accountability. 
  • Uncovering costly state-reporting data accuracy errors before submitting. 

The Solution

Hosted and supported by ESC Region 10 and developed in partnership with Ed-Fi Alliance and the Dallas Country Promise/Commit Partnership, CCMR Insights is a web-based software tool designed to help staff use real-time data to get and keep students on track for CCMR. Following the approval of Texas House Bill 3 in 2019, school districts have an even greater need to monitor and predict student progress. For schools and districts to be able to capture the necessary funding bonuses for their CCMR programs, they need to know when and where intervention is needed for students currently enrolled. 

The team understood from outset that a key element to predictive analysis is a healthy repository of data over several years. Myriad data sources provide insight and shed light on the skill gap. However, the various high school assessment tools and the necessary input of historical data reaching back to 2018 are from different systems that speak different data languages. Finding a way to create a throughline across these disparate sources was an essential step to create a predictive tool as powerful as the CCMR Insights dashboard. 

“Staff is able to see exactly where students are on their journey and where they might be missing in other areas.”

Mesquite ISD
Dallas County

Nuts and Bolts – Ed-Fi Data Standards and Support

By implementing Ed-Fi Data Standards, the CCMR Insights tool combines multiple data sources from various schools — including student information systems, assessment vendors, and college readiness instruments — to collect robust, real-time data that can deliver deep analysis and give districts a more holistic view of students. 

The SIS, assessment, and vendor data are provided by the districts and processed through loaded into the Ed-Fi ODS in standardized format to allow a common set of data to be processed through the middleware, which applies rules to the data to make it usable and functional. After that, the CCMR Insights software analyzes the data and develops action plans that are delivered via a CCMR/HB3 Dashboard. 

 

The Outcome

Through their partnership and launch of the pilot program, district and campus leaders can now use the CCMR Insights dashboard to: 

 

Identify students who have not yet earned an A-F indicator and calculate projected scores in real-time and more proactively provide targeted interventions and support.

Calculate projected scores in real-time for critical college, career, and military readiness assessments.

Improve case management for CCMR.

Monitor projected CCMR scores by district/charter and campus.

Predict the Outcomes Bonus funding a district will receive, allowing LEAs to make informed plans for reinvesting those dollars in CCMR programs.

Create a holistic view of student-level development and an evidence-informed strategic action plan to help students attain their college, career and military readiness goals.

Consider legislative tweaks and changes, freeing LEAs from the burden of adjusting outdated, cumbersome spreadsheets to keep up-to-date.

Consistent and standardized data insights and tools, fostering better collaboration between partners leveraging the CCMR Insights dashboard.

 

 

“It provides the insight to know where our students are being successful and not and allowing us to see the gaps our students are experiencing to fill.”

Grand Prairie ISD
Dallas County

The Results

As the program continues to transition out of the pilot phase and TEA begins to post their 2022 results in the fall, the CCMR Insights team and its partners will begin to realize its full impact. Currently, districts are projecting a 5% to 25% increase in potential funding gains. Beyond the potential financial gain, the pilot program has also successfully demonstrated how the CCMR Insights dashboard can drive better student outcomes by identifying those who may not reach their requirements in a more proactive and less burdensome way. 

 

“We have rolled out the dashboard and trained our counselors how to look at students within their alpha. Counselors are able to meet with students who have no points and counsel them appropriately.”

Weatherford ISD
Parker County

The Conclusion

The potential of what can be unlocked through the collaboration between Ed-Fi, Region 10, and the CCMR Insights team is just coming into focus. Through their partnership they have stood up and launched a web-based software tool to keep high school students on track and provide them with an actionable plan to meet their CCMR requirements. The results of the partnership are also allowing schools to maximize accountability ratings and outcome-based funding, predict scores in real-time, and develop funding plans. And as the team knows well, unlocking the potential of predicative analysis requires data. What was once backward-looking, outdated data that failed to provide a holistic view of a current student has been transformed into life-changing insights. By utilizing the Ed-Fi standard technology, CCMR Insights is able to provide a solution for LEA’s that empower them to make real-time strategic plans for their programs — and each and every student.  

 

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