Cindy Patterson, CETPA CTO Mentor Candidate

 

Learning Outcomes

 

OrM-06.  Demonstrate a working knowledge of how to use vision, mission, and goals to direct organizational performance.

OrM-07.  Demonstrate a working knowledge of the relationship between IT and other organizational units and the importance of service alignment.

OrM-08. Develop a working knowledge of what policies and procedures are required to adequately document and control the activities of an IT organization.

OrM-11. Demonstrate the ability to apply skills by writing a vision statement.

 

Context

 

Enterprise Business Systems is my main focus at the Santa Clara County Office of Education, SCCOE. Our county office has a very small amount of students who qualify for CAASPP testing compared to an average district.  The Educational Technology Group at SCCOE has spent significant time and resources assisting districts in preparing for testing and it has been an ongoing focus at the Technology Leadership Community hosted by SCCOE.  For this exercise I used the CTO Unified Background document. 

 

Artifact

 

The artifact presented is a plan to evaluate the districts performance on the Spring 2015 CAASPP.  This demonstrates several skills for organizational planning.  Vision and mission statements have been created which align with the districts mission statement and goals.  Objectives were identified along with critical success factors and key performance indicators.  This provides a framework to us Deming’s improvement cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act.

Organizational Management Portfolio Assignment

 

California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, CAASPP, replaced Standardized Testing and Reporting, STAR, on January 1, 2014.  CAASPP uses a variety of assessment approaches to promote quality teaching and learning.  The content areas for testing are English and Mathematics.  Each of these areas will have a computer adaptive test (CAT). As the student work through a computer adaptive test the computer program adjusts the difficulty of questions based on the student responses.  CAASPP will be used as part of the Academic Performance Index and the Adequately Yearly Progress.

 

The district’s mission is to provide a learning community that challenges ALL students to reach their greatest potential. District goals are:

·   Raising student achievement

·   Building supportive relationships

·   Being focused on service to students and their families

·   Maintaining safe, clean and attractive schools

·   Maximizing fiscal resources

·   Optimizing the use of our facilities

 

Technology is ubiquitous in today’s society and a requirement. The IT department must be a strategic partner in all aspects of school business to provide tools to reach our goals. The IT department’s vision, mission and goals must reflect and amplify those of Carmen Travis Oakes School District.

 

IT Vision

IT will be a strategic partner in all aspects of Carmen Travis Oakes School District

IT Mission

IT will align resources with organizational goals and provide cost effective Technology Tools to promote student success.

 

IT Goals for CAASPP Testing

 

• Testing will be completed in assigned window of time.

Objectives

Provide adequate bandwidth for all academic endeavors

Provide cost effective hardware resources to support student success

Provide proactive and responsive technical support to support student success

 

• Students and Proctors will be prepared to use the technology resources during CAASPP testing

Objectives

Students will be provided practice opportunities prior to the test

All data will be in place for the test

Proctors will be provided training to support successful testing

 

Technology resources plan a key role in the success of testing; providing students the best chance of scoring well.  The necessary resources include network resources, computer resources, and technical support resources.  The staff that administers the support must be well trained in addition to the teachers preparing the student for this test. 

 

A significant consideration for this test process is the amount of time needed.  CAASPP has testing windows.  Grades 3-8 has a 12-week window that begins after 66% of the instructional year is complete.  Grade 11 has a testing window of 7 weeks after 80% of the instructional year has been completed.  Estimated time should be based on the number of students, computers, and hours per day the computers are available. The Smarter Balanced Technology Readiness Calculator can be found at http://www3.cde.ca.gov/sbactechcalc. 

 

Evaluation Plan

 

Evaluation of Carmen Travis Oakes School District’s technical performance on the Spring 2015 CAASPP must be done on 2 levels; qualitative and quantitative.  From a qualitative view point the students and protects experience and perception are the critical success factors.  For quantitative measurement we can use statistics such as network availability, computer availability and support response rate.

 

Qualitative Examination

 

Survey of student experience during testing

Survey of proctor experience during testing

 

Quantitative Examination

 

Measurement of network bandwidth during testing (60% or less utilization)

Measurement of percentage of time network available during testing (99.9% availability)

Measurement of number of computers/student available during testing window (1.25 computers/student)

Measurement of response time and resolution time to service requests (SLA met 98% of the time)

 

For the qualitative analysis we will survey both students and proctors, separately, about their experience.  The survey will be administered using on online tool, survey monkey.  Students and proctors will be asked quick 10 question survey at the end of testing. Qualitative measurements will be based on monitoring tools for the network and data mining from the service request system.  We will use both the system performance metrics and the surveys to assist in preparing next year’s support and improving the technology support of testing.  This follows the Deming quality cycle of Plan-Do- Check-Act.  This was created by Dr. W Edwards Deming who is often considered to be the father of modern quality control.

 

Communication

 

There are many stakeholders for the performance of the school district in administering the CAASPP.  The students, district, and community will be impacted by our ability to perform during these tests.  We will share this evaluation plan with the following:

 

Cabinet

Prior to administering the test and evaluation we will present our plan to cabinet at a cabinet meeting and obtain their support for our determination of critical success factors and key performance indicators.

 

Administrators/Teachers

The plan will be shared with Administrators and Teachers through email due to their rigorous schedule. We will offer an opportunity to provide feedback to a central email account CAASPP_readiness@carmen.k12.ca.edu.

 

Parents

After we have obtained the support of cabinet administrators and teachers, we will make a small presentation at a future school meeting to share our testing plan with parents.

 

Students

During the testing preparation we will share our testing plan and aspirations with students and emphasize our desire to support them during this test.

 

Conclusion

 

We must improve and evolve as requirements change and shift.  By creating evaluation plans with a vision, mission, objectives, critical success factors and communication plan we will have a framework to measure our success.  With measurement comes an opportunity to improve.  This evaluation plan will also demonstrate our alignment with the district educators, attention to detail and support of our students, a key goal of our district.

 

Reference

California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) System. (2014). Retrieved 2015, from http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/ca/documents/caaspp101.pdf