School or District Improvements!

What plans does your school building or district have for improvement over the next several years?

How will they collect data to inform the process or measure the effectiveness of the plan? (To find this information, you may need to schedule a conversation with your principal or a district representative.)

Where do you see the future of assessment in your classroom, school or district?

My district - Irving ISD - has all sorts of plans in the works. Drive by most of our campuses, including Nimitz High School where I work, and you'll see what I mean. Construction abound, and it's for projects that would blow your mind.

I spoke with a counselor at Lamar Middle School about the new middle school currently under construction just a mile or two away. Lamar's student body of 800 should be reduced by 200. This middle school is unlike any other in the nation. It's defined as "net-zero," meaning that the energy it consumes should be no more than the energy it produces! Any excess energy produced will be sold with the profits going to Irving ISD. I know it sounds too good to be true, but it's the truth. For more information, click here! http://www.irvingisd.net/ppage/netzeromiddleschool.htm.

For data collection, my district uses online program called D2SC, formerly known as EdSoft. I spoke with my campus technician Bill Briseno about the issue of data collection and how it relates to D2SC. He explained to me that the information gathered by the formal assessments administered via D2SC is backed up on Irving ISD servers as well as a private company's server's. Those latter servers are kept in an undisclosed location - even though Bill's my friend, he wasn't willing to dish.

I see the future of assessment within my district focusing on D2SC-like programs. Our staff and administrators are only getting younger, and that typically means the faculty is much more receptive to this kind of change. I'm looking forward to administering formative and summative assessments via laptops. Computers streamline so many areas of education, but the campus direction and the faculty training is so important. The future of assessment is clear, but the road won't be easy!