NSBA and SIF Association Release What School Boards Need to Know

Oct. 30, 2009 - PRLog -- The National School Boards Association (NSBA) and the SIF Association announce the release of a report for school boards in planning for and using data systemically, What School Boards Need to Know: Data Conversations.
“Over the past several years, data has become a prevalent topic in education. While the primary focus has been at the state department of education level, school boards need to begin conversations around how to connect this longitudinal data from the state to the local level and how it can improve teaching and learning,” states Anne Bryant, Executive Director, NSBA. “We are at an exciting and unprecedented time in education. With the access to technology, data analysis and conversations around data, we can truly impact student achievement for each individual student.”

This report is a practical guide for local school boards to facilitate conversations around:
 data needs for various stakeholders,
 the types of data needed,
 organizational change,
 technology challenges,
 professional development to effect change,
 making data meaningful,
 policies for accessing data and
 sustainability for continuous improvement.

These conversations need to occur at the local, state and federal level. In addition, the report highlights several school districts, the success stories and processes each went through to become data-driven organizations.

Dr. Larry Fruth, Executive Director/CEO, SIF Association explains, ”Making data at all levels in the educational structure accessible is critical. In order to comprehensively look at improving education, there must be the connection between instructional and administrative data. This report not only highlights this crucial need, but also how school boards can begin conversations with policy makers and steps needed to make this happen.”
What School Boards Need to Know: Data Conversations can be downloaded at the SIF Association website, www.sifassociation.org, or the NSBA Website, www.nsba.org. The report was supported by the Administrative Assistants Ltd., CPSI, Ltd, Datawise and Intel and co-developed with Orange City Schools, Vancouver Public Schools and Western Heights Public Schools.

About the National School Boards Association
Founded in 1940, the National School Boards Association (www.nsba.org) is a not-for-profit federation of state associations of school boards representing 95,000 local school board members throughout the United States. Its mission is to foster excellence and equity in public elementary and secondary education through local school board leadership. NSBA represents the school board perspective in working with federal government agencies and national organizations that impact education, and provides vital information and services to state associations of school boards throughout the nation.

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About the SIF Association
The SIF Association is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of over 2,300 schools, districts, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively define the rules and regulations for educational software data interoperability. The SIF Implementation Specification enables diverse applications to interact and share data efficiently, reliably, and securely regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The SIF Association has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit http://www.sifassociation.org.