Course Assignments
In this initial assignment,
your task will be to visit several well-known websites, which
utilize databases to convey information for decision-making.
As you visit these sites, you will be asked to
describe the sites, outline the data available at these sites, and
determine what decisions could be made using these data using a
matrix to summarize your notes. At the conclusion of this
assignment, you will be asked to reflect on these sites as to their
usefulness and timeliness for decision-makers.
Peter Drucker, the well-known organizational
management theorist (who is sometimes referred to as the “father of
systems management”) wrote that “Data endowed with relevance is
information”. We will begin Assignment
#2: Data and Information by examining a small but powerful
database constructed by the American School Board Journal. In
their annual report about the nation’s schools, reported in
the Their ‘Education Vital Signs”, you will begin your database work
by examining these data from a national, regional, and local
perspective and drawing some conclusions concerning our schools.
Using Microsoft’s Excel as the analytic software tool, you
will learn about some useful tools for performing data analysis that
will be of use throughout the course.
In New York State, the home
for St. John’s University, we employ a large range of district and
school based data to make educational decisions. These data (yes,
the word “data” is plural) are available on-line for all districts
and schools to access. This access, however, is most useful if you
know Microsoft’s ACCESS, which is a fine program but not necessarily
the most friendly for non-data users. Enter the School District
Almanac. Built in FileMaker Pro (V.7.0), I have designed and
constructed a statewide database for easy use by educational
administrators. The Almanac, which began as a project for my
School Finance course because the necessary financial data were not
easily accessible for students or administrators, has become a
well-known statewide database currently used in more than 200
districts across New York State. In Assignment #3, you will become
familiar with this database by exploring the 8 major areas of this
database: achievement, financial, instruction, enrollment,
demographic, budget, personnel, and educational indicators.
A matrix is a series of
rows and columns, which contains summary data that is easily viewed
and digested. Usually, the columns are specific types of data and
the rows are major categories of data. Spreadsheets are perfect
examples of a matrix. In the next assignment, you will use the
information you gathered in your previous assignment by choosing one
district whose achievement levels are below expectations. The
achievement criteria you use to choose the district will be
important! For this district, you will begin to put together the
most relevant data from four areas of the Almanac database: Finance,
Instruction, Demographics and Achievement. Using these data
indicators, you will begin to construct a set of four district
profile matrices using at least 6 indicators in each of the four
areas. To complete your analysis, you will put together a Microsoft
POWERPOINT (or Harvard Graphics) presentation to present a clear and
concise profile of the district and your findings. (Teams of
students are encouraged to work together given various levels of
technical prowess!)
|
In your previous assignment,
you chose a district and developed a profile of descriptive
characteristics in four major areas. If our desire is to develop a
plan of action to help this district, these data lay the groundwork
for our plan. In the next assignment, you will now choose a set of
either comparable districts or contiguous (neighboring) districts to
begin to build a plan of action. Your choice of districts will
include an “aspiration” district and the information provided by
these districts will help us to develop a series of potential steps
upon which we can move the target district forward toward the
district it aspires to be like. The matrices you build for this
analysis will be in the same four major areas outlined in Assignment
4. This time, however, the matrix rows will be the comparable
districts including the target district and the aspiration district.
As before, to complete your analysis, you will put together a
Microsoft POWERPOINT (or Harvard Graphics) presentation to present a
clear and concise profile of the district and your findings. (Teams
of students are encouraged to work together given various levels of
technical prowess!)
In your previous assignment,
you chose an aspiration district and developed a profile of
comparative characteristics in four major areas across the 8 or
so districts, including your target district. In the next
assignment, you will examine the root causes behind the
target district’s difficulty in raising its level of achievement.
The matrices you built in Assignment 4 will be quite beneficial in
your search for answers. You will learn to do graphical correlation
analysis and “skeleton analysis” to examine trends and relationships
between and among your districts.
Discovering “Root Causes” is an effective way to use data
descriptively, comparatively and, ultimately, summatively.
As you have now discovered,
knowing “root causes” is an effective way to use data descriptively,
comparatively and, ultimately, summatively. With the arsenal of data
you have now collected, the final piece of the puzzle is to develop
an accountability plan, which will aid the target district. Your job
is to develop the first step in that plan. We will use the Douglas
Reeves framework for plan development and utilize the extensive data
you have gathered to frame the initial tasks for your target
district.
Site Map for EDU 5650
|
Course Assignment
Snapshots
