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You are here: Home / Agile software / SchoolBenchmarker™, an innovative school comparison tool

06/05/2015 by Sean Brady

SchoolBenchmarker™, an innovative school comparison tool

SchoolBenchmarker™ is an innovative school comparison tool. It allows any school in New York State to find similar schools performing at higher levels. Prism and its CTO Andrew Tait have recently updated SchoolBenchmarker™ for Cornell’s New York State Center for Rural Schools. The service could easily be implemented in any state, province or state country.

“SchoolBenchmarker™ is an awesome tool! Within minutes, I found two phenomenal benchmarks. I believe we will be able to learn a lot from these schools and will be contacting them very soon.”
Terry Dougherty, Superintendent, Hancock Central School District

How does SchoolBenchmarker work?

Users rave about SchoolBenchmarker™’s slick, easy and effective user interface and user experience (UI/UX). For any selected school, SchoolBenchmarker™ presents a default list of potential benchmarks. The list is generated by the clever School Similarity Index (SSI) calculation and by one of two school performance calculations.

“SchoolBenchmarker™ is very, very cool! It’s so slick, I love it. I can see where it would be really useful to school districts looking to improve their performance.”
Solvejg Wastvedt, Education Reporter, WSKG Public Media

The SSI clusters similar schools based on these factors:

  • grade-level configuration
  • enrollment
  • percentage of students receiving free lunch
  • percentage of English-language learners
  • ethnicity
  • available resources
“SchoolBenchmarker™ is a fabulous tool! I am so grateful that the NYS Center for Rural Schools is providing this much needed school comparison tool.”
Barbara Recchio, Staff Development and Data Coordinator, Center for Instruction, Technology and Innovation

The list of similar schools is then sorted from higher to lower performance. There are two school performance calculations:

  • Elementary/middle school performance calculation: % proficient Grade 3-8 ELA & Math state assessments * % economically disadvantaged.
  • Graduation performance calculation: Net 5 year cohort graduation rate * % economically disadvantaged where net graduation rate is defined as (% cohort graduating 5 yrs by 6/30) – (% cohort dropping out 5 yrs by 6/30).
“SchoolBenchmarker™ is great! I love that it is so simple to use. In seconds my administrators can get the benchmarking information they’ve been asking for – information that would take an experienced database expert days or more to prepare.”
Cheryl Lyn Covell, Data Analyst, Tompkins Seneca Tioga BOCES

How can SchoolBenchmarker™ be used to improve performance?

A benchmark is a higher performing, similar school. The more a similar school outperforms your school, the more compelling that school is as a benchmark.SchoolBenchmarker</span™ helps you identify benchmark schools so that you can:

  • Set achievable academic targets based on demonstrated best-in-class performance.
  • Discover the practices that high performing, similar schools use to achieve their best-in-class performance.

SchoolBenchmarker™ is especially useful for facilitating data-driven conversations regarding the setting of school and grade-level improvement targets in the era of teacher and principal accountability for student performance. In simple terms, SchoolBenchmarker™ lets school leaders know

  • How well their schools are doing.
  • How much they could improve.
  • Where they can go to find out how to improve.

For a more detail description of school benchmarking, see Benchmarking as an Improvement Tool. Or if you’re interested in using SchoolBenchmarker™ in your state, province or country, please contact us.

App icon is Radar, from The Noun Project.

 

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Filed Under: Agile software Tagged With: agile development, Apps, cohort tracking, dropout, dropout rate, graduation rate, innovation, iPad, iPhone

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Sean Brady
President
Prism Decision Systems, LLC
[email protected]
607.727.1088
Skype: PrismDecision
Twitter: @prismdecision

 

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