DOE Rolling Out New System to Track Students
When students head back to school today, their teachers and principals will have a new tool to help them succeed.
That tool — a new system for storing and using student information, is what helped the state emerge as among the 19 finalists for a federal grant.
“We were much clearer on current data systems and how we intend to use them,” the Hawaii Department of Education‘s Bob Campbell told us about the state’s latest Race to the Top application. Campbell, formerly the director of federal compliance for the department, is the new executive assistant for school reform.
Page 4 of the department’s of the application details a plan toward “improving longitudinal data collection and use” for the purpose of “making data-driven decisions to improve student achievement.”
It’s encouraging to see the department embrace data. We shamelessly betrayed our love for data — and belief in its value — last week.
As your self-appointed data maven, I am on a mission to find out what the new system will do, exactly. Here are my early findings from talking with department officials and others involved in the application process. (Incidentally, after reading this, please feel free to jump into the discussion and add your $5 worth.)
Details and examples will come progressively because teachers and administrators statewide began training on the new Data for School Improvement system only this summer and it is gradually rolling into schools this fall.
“We’re moving quickly, and they’re having various workshops island by island,” said department communications director Sandy Goya. “We’re looking towards a comprehensive data system that is going to help us to make better decisions and manage better. I think people are really excited about it. We are really excited about it.”
What We Know So Far
“This absolutely will give a more complete picture of each student,” Goya told Civil Beat.
The DSI system will include synthesized tracking of a range of indicators from the predictable (grades and performance by subject area) to the not-so-predictable (at-risk, on-track for graduation) for every single student.
Many of these data points were tracked piecemeal through a hodgepodge of other systems, but what makes the new system unique is that the various pieces of information are now collected into one place. And the data is made available to teachers, administrators and researchers in a rapid-delivery format (we’re not sure yet what that means).
Perhaps most helpful to teachers will be the , which allow them the opportunity to give running commentary on each of their students. For example, if a student is struggling to grasp a particular math concept, that would go into the student’s formative assessment — as would the teacher’s attempts to overcome the roadblock.
“In addition,” Goya said, “the ability to review a student’s Hawaii State Assessment scores over time will give us a better picture of how a student is progressing.”2
The new system tracks all of these things — and more, apparently — over a student’s K-12 career (hence, “longitudinal”).
Questions we still have:
- Who developed the system, and is it — or anything like it — being used in any other states?
- Security: Will the student data be accessible outside the DOE’s secured network?
- Will there be collective forms of the data as well?
- How flexible is the input system for the student profiles? i.e., Will teachers be able to include anecdotes about students that can help subsequent teachers interact with them?
- Will students have any form of access to their profiles?

- Will parents have access to their children’s profiles?1
- When recording HSA scores, will the profiles include scoring on all attempts at the assessment, or only the best scores?
