Charlotte, NC — September 24, 2008 — Mariner proudly announced the roll out of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ District Data Dashboard, a groundbreaking website for parents, teachers, administrators and the entire community, that enables everyone to monitor how well the students are doing and how the school district is meeting its strategic goals.
This type of website and its information is unprecedented in that it provides direct, 24/7 access to critical school district data. Although much of the data has been made public previously, the Data Dashboard represents the first time CMS has put all the data in a single location. Parents, teachers and administrators can see measures of student achievement, including end of grade scores and year-over-year trends. In addition, parents can easily compare the performance of their children’s school with other schools in the district. All of this information is provided in easy-to-understand scorecards, using Microsoft PerformancePoint Server, SharePoint and SQL Server.
“Accountability and performance management are key issues in education,” said Dr. Peter C. Gorman, superintendent. “The Data Dashboard is a powerful online tool to monitor progress at CMS because it gives direct access to current district data in a user-friendly format. It will allow our parents, our administrators and anyone who’s interested to see how we are meeting our goals and how well our students are learning.” The Board of Education can also get a real-time snapshot of whether CMS is likely to meet, exceed, or fall short of its performance goals by 2010 and beyond – and use the information to make timely adjustments to stay on track.
The data dashboard represents a new approach to community involvement in the education of CMS students. With a greater understanding of how students are doing, CMS parents, teachers, administrators and the community at large can better serve the needs of the students, producing graduates that are ready to lead rich and productive lives and contribute to a global society.
“We are on the leading edge in education. We’re using high-quality data to drive better decisions and create policy – increasing transparency and pushing ourselves to do more for our kids,” explained Jonathan Raymond, Chief Accountability Officer, Charlotte- Mecklenburg Schools.
Some performance information is gathered yearly, such as end-of-grade test scores, while other measures, such as school audits, are measured on a semester or quarterly basis. CMS even monitors a few key performance indicators (KPIs) on a daily basis, such as emergency work order response time.
“We are very pleased to be part of the Data Dashboard project, because it gives us a chance to marry technology and public education in a new way,” commented, David Fitzgerald, Mariner’s Education Practice Leader. “We believe that CMS is on the forefront of a new trend that allows the entire community to easily understand how the school district is doing and support improvement efforts. And as one of many CMS parents at Mariner, we are eager to see how well the district is serving our children,” Fitzgerald continued. “By using Microsoft technology, we’ve been able to design a Data Dashboard that everyone can use from an Internet browser without any special software or computer skills.”
The District Data Dashboard is so innovative that Mariner earned Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner of the Year award for Performance Management for the project. “We are pleased to see partners like Mariner focused on delivering solutions in education,” said Robert Deshaies, Vice President, U.S. Partner Group, Microsoft Corp. “Microsoft is excited to recognize their technology, which provides schools with the capability to monitor, manage, and analyze school operations and the student body.” Mariner was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft partners as delivering market-leading customer solutions built on Microsoft technology.
