Friday, November 14, 2014

Data reporting in NYS and where we fit...

I work for WFLBOCES - we are one of 12 RICs in NYS.  We support 47 districts of 700 statewide. We have about 100 employees.  We offer many services to our districts.

One of the primary services that we provide NYS is the gathering of student assessment/score data into a central database.  NYS provides $ to us, thank you taxpayers, to ensure that we collect this data from all of our districts.

 Our districts use a variety of SIS (student information system), like

  • Infinate Campus
  • Powerschool
  • Schooltool
  • Schoolmaster

We work with the districts collecting data from the SISs.  This process is nicely explained with using a media piece here.   This is our website Edutech, which is hosted by schoolWorld - parent company Blackboard.

We collect data from our districts for storage into a data warehouse, we call this a level 0 DB

The summary of the data loading process is this - I just think this is interesting to understand on the high, conceptual level.
  1. Data is loaded to Level 0 warehouse
  2. Data is validated and corrected in level 0
  3. Data is locked in level 0
  4. Data is moved to level 1
  5. Data is processed from level 1 and moved to level 2, data is moved from level 2 to its final reporting place, like PD site.
This process takes place over the course of a few days, where districts have a small window to provide the data to level 0 by Wednesday - at which point it is locked and the district must wait until the following Wednesday to get a pull or refresh or extract of data from their SIS into level 0.

Got it?  I do, and I like it.

One of the other services that we offer our districts is Moodle - hey, but if you read this blog, you already know that!

Thanks - be safe and healthy.




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1 comment:

  1. jamesMarch 5, 2015 at 10:15 AM

    I was looking at this again today. I would like verification from someone in our organization about my understanding

    school a,b,c adminstrer exams, collect and grade and input that data into THEIR SMS (student management system) - could be infinate campus, schoolmaster, schooltool etc.
    we - edutech, run a program that reads the data from the schools SMS and pulls, copies it into a level 0 warehouse (container DB). This happens on Monday AM

    Monday PM - Wed. AM - someone at the district where we pulled data from, looks at the data in the level 0 holding tank and verifies - / corrects it if it needs it.

    When the district person says "ok, data pulled from our system into level 0 looks good" - they lock the data. by Wed. close of business

    Thurs - Friday - The data is moved, somehow, from the level 0 holding tank to a more finalized level 1 holding tank - where other systems consume data from.

    This is the data collection, verification and sharing system that we follow. Allowing a continuous weekly collection/correction and distributing for consumption of important assessment related data.

    the end.
    The

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