Student/Staff Demographics Report

In [...]]]> The Advanced Analysis Section contains a powerful wizard to allow you to analyze standard assessment and attendance data along any meaningful axes to highlight/dramatize specific strengths/weaknesses manifested by anomalies in the data. The Advanced Analysis facility enables you to customize the title and include any table generated here in your C/DIP at the click of the mouse.

In general, the tool presents itself as two side-by-side collections of lists. The lists in the left collection generally form table Row Headers. The List in the right collection generally form table Column Headers. The use of the analysis tool is very intuitive. Once you build a report or two, you will understand perfectly how it works, and be able to build some marvelously specific tables without once asking for assistance from your over-worked IT Department. Give it a try — you will be amazed.  

The Tool may be used on Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), on Attendance data (AEIS), and to develop charts and graphs from data generated by SIMPL’s Opinion Survey Tool.

The following are exampes of how to use the Advanced Analysis tool on TAKS data:

Advanced Analysis TAKS Report Specification

Advanced Analysis Chart 1-b

We also found that some organizations (districts and [...]]]> So many times, while researching the need for SIMPL™, we  would walk into a school, ask to see the state mandated Campus Improvement Plan, and would have to wait patiently for some alert staff member to:

1. Remember what it was, and
2. Remember which dusty shelf had become it’s storage place.

We also found that some organizations (districts and schools), would often respond to such a  request with something like,

“Do you want to see the ‘Compliance plan,’ or do you want to know what we are actually doing?”

Often, plans would contain page after page of briefly described strategies (sometimes one-line descriptions) — actions with nebulous definition, but that could be done, and if done, some improvement doubtless would probably result.   Such plans, in the interest of brevity, would sometimes not identify  milestones, dates,  responsible persons, full descriptions of new or altered methods, expected results, affected subjects, NCLB Improvement Areas, etc.    In defense of these organizations and their compliance plans, fleshing out all these elements for each strategy would easily and frequently result in tomes containing hundreds of pages.

In this environment, schools often only print one copy to submit for approval and one copy for the shelf in case some nosey busybody asks to see it.  Don’t even think about  changing environments or requirements at the school potentially resulting in the continuous need for  mid-course adjustments  during the year.  Even if the schools recognized and  made the adjustments anyway (to their actual plan), rarely would they take on the  onerous task of updating the official copies of the compliance Improvement Plan.  Hard copy Improvment Plans inhibit dynamic adjustments to continuously changing needs.  Very few organization would be expected to actually use such hard copy plans.

SIMPL™ responds to these issues by providing its users with an online, multiyear “Living Improvement Plan.”  We can produce at any time a copy of your school’s current improvement plan (in “>PDF” format for printing or inclusion in local websites) but we also continuously maintain  web-page-ready, archival versions of the current Living Plan.  It can be printed but rarely is–your constituents can navigate to and examine the current plan at their leisure.  Even the plan approval process is facilitated by SIMPL’s support for electronic submittal and approval.   

The Campus Improvement Plan is important, but In SIMPL™, the Improvement Plan is not the principal aim of the planning exercise; execution of the plan to achieve the desired Goals and Objectives is the principal aim of our service.    Executing the plan is a continuous process.  It also is a learning process, not just for students but also for administrators and teachers.  For instance, one of our services is to provide a dynamic Objectives Status Report to aid in periodic local and board level reviews of  the execution of the school’s plan and to ensure that the desired results are being realized.  This enables schools/districts to quickly and easily adjust to address the dynamics of on-the-spot organizational needs and to fold the adjustments into the current online Improvement Plan.   Because the plan can be printed at any time it rarely is.  If anyone asks to see the Improvement Plan, you  can confidently direct them to your website to see your always current plan. 

Most importantly, when requirements or other needed changes or adjustments are detected, SIMPL provides mechanisms to incorporate the changes immediately, without having to wait for the next planning cycle to properly fund,  document, and deploy the mid-course corrections. 

In summary, SIMPL™ is an on-line service and that means that your Goals, Objectives, and very importantly, your Strategies, are easily adjusted to address:

1. changing conditions,
2. better understood needs, and
3. better understood, more effective methods.