Data Dashboard Tracks Progress For Shoreline High School Students

The beginning of the 2011-2012 school year marks the third year that Shoreline will be using the Data Dashboard Program in its high schools.

The program, said Jack Monpas-Huber, the Shoreline School District’s Director of Assessment, was designed to help Shoreline educators, parents and students make more data-informed decisions by bringing a variety of assessment information together in one place.

The web-based application, which is accessible from anywhere, is updated frequently and enables students to monitor their test scores, assignments and grades in near real-time.

Kathy Ellingson, a Shorecrest physics teacher, said “having grades online is good because everyone knows what's going on, students, parents and teachers.”

“If a student disagrees either with a grade or whether an assignment was handed in, it can be cleared up in a timely manner,” she said. “I think the students like it except some of them like their parents to be out of the loop.”

As a teacher, Ellingson says that the information about individual classes that the program makes readily available is particularly beneficial. For each class, staff members are able to see class sizes, girl-to-boy ratios, WASL scores, number of discipline referrals a student has had, learning disabilities and health alerts.

“I like to see, especially, the composition of the freshmen classes,” she said. “It helps me build a good seating chart so the year gets off to a good start.”

Teachers at Shorecrest and Shorewood are also able to view, among other things, lists of their students that are struggling in one or more classes and the association between WASL achievement, course placement, and race among their students.

Monpas-Huber, who says that teachers appreciate having this access to their students’ information, said that having this information also enables parents to monitor their child’s academic performance “in a proactive, rather than reactive, way.”

Data Dashboard allows parents to view individual class progress reports as well as a list of colleges with admission criteria related to the students’ real-time GPA.

“It’s a very handy tool,” said Shoreline School District Public Information Officer, Craig Degginger, who is the father of a Shorecrest student. “My daughter is sophomore. I’ll take a look at the records two or three times a week.”

The program has been helpful to teachers and administrators in assessing which students may need extra support or extra challenge in a particular subject. As well as pinpointing which students may be at risk of failing or accumulating too many absences.

For the program to be even more useful to staff and faculty, said Monpas-Huber, it could include new views that better combine related data into one place and facilitate analysis of how student achievement has increased over a period of time.

“The Dashboard is a work-in-progress,” he said. “It can always be improved to better fit the needs of the Shoreline community for student information.”