The Commonwealth of Kentucky enjoys a nationally renowned system of assessment and accountability, coupled with a deep technology infrastructure designed around classroom instruction. The Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) of 1990 and the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS) have served as models of education reform and school accountability for education leaders nationwide. However, Kentucky has identified two significant areas that must be addressed in its current education scheme to help these extraordinary advances continue:
- the inability to track individual student data over time
- the lack of a consolidated, statewide data-collection and analysis system that can be used reform classroom instruction and meet the reporting requirements of NCLB
The Kentucky Instructional Data System (KIDS) project is funded primarily through a $5.8 million federal grant awarded in late 2005 by the National Center for Education Statistics’ Institute for Education Sciences. Kentucky was one of 14 states to be awarded funding for a federal Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS). The purpose of the grant is to:
- enable states to manage, analyze, disaggregate and use individual student data
- increase the number of states that maintain statewide longitudinal data systems
- support decision-making at state, district, school and classroom levels
- help states meet reporting requirements of NCLB
In addition to and in support of the federal goals, KDE also expects that KIDS will:
- add longitudinal student tracking with both enrollment and assessment data
- enable interoperability of data systems across district and state databases,
- create a data warehouse that combines demographic, assessment and financial data
- create a foundation that will allow other sources of data to be added and searched/queried, such as data from CPE and EPSB
- be the foundation for a more robust Knowledge Management Portal that will serve up a wealth of targeted instructional resources, including standards-based units of study, lesson plans, curriculum maps, assessments and other educational resources; the portal will offer a collaborative workspace that teachers can use to share best practices, develop test items and expand their professional skills
Utilizing off-the-shelf solutions as much as possible, the project will initially focus on building the data warehouse and establishing analysis and reporting capabilities. Assessment, financial, and student demographic data will be the first data added. Subsequent phases will focus on other sources.
Claraview, Inc. of Reston, Virginia will provide software and professional services for the KIDS statewide longitudinal data system. Claraview was selected as the contract holder after a Request for Proposals was issued in the fall of 2006.