Integro Provides Web Solution for Tracking State Progress on No Child Left Behind Legislation

Challenge

In 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the revised Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the most significant federal policy initiative in a generation. The Denver-based Education Commission of the States (ECS) received a grant to track progress of all 50 states in meeting the requirements of this act, known as No Child Left Behind.

ECS is a non-profit organization formed in 1965 to improve public education by facilitating the exchange of information, ideas and experiences among state policymakers and education leaders.  

Solution

To track states’ progress, ECS surveyed leaders in every state and researched state laws, regulations and other material to develop an in-depth database showing every state’s progress on 40 different indicators.  ECS asked Integro to extend the data and associated reports to the Internet so that users can take a 50-state look at how much progress states have made, review individual states or compare two or more states side by side. ECS wanted the on-line reporting to be interactive and available to all ECS’ constituents on the Web with standard browsers.

The on-line reporting capability was built as an extension to a system that Integro developed with ECS called the Model Builder. The Model Builder provides the framework for ECS and its partner, the Aspen Institute, to refine the next-generation accountability models that incorporate lessons learned of the past decade and support new approaches for improving education. These models will help states use results-based accountability to improve student achievement.  The Model Builder captures and stores model attributes (what is ideal) and provides a survey to gather data for the current position of each state. The gap identified illustrates where each state currently is relative to each model.

The NCLB reporting provides users with high-level information (including state level data displayed on a map of the US) of the various NCLB topics, color-coded to display progress.  Users can drill down into the details of a specific topic, or multiple topics by state(s), and perform side-by-side comparisons to gauge a state’s position relative to the Act and its peers.

Integro developed the initial NCLB Reporting capabilities in 4 weeks by leveraging our web based Business Intelligence (BI) components running on Microsoft’s technology platform featuring SQL/Server.  These technologies combined with Integro’s expert personnel and project methodology delivered rapid results while encouraging frequent feedback from ECS.

Results

The information provided by ECS via the on-line database is an important signpost for each state on their journey towards NCLB.

Key benefits include:

• One source of current information on all states
• Easy navigation from high-level to detailed data
• Browser-based to provide broad access
• Scaleable to support large numbers of inquiries
• Flexible platform to support future reporting needs as well as other initiatives