Under a grant recently funded by the U.S. Department of Education
Institute of Education Sciences (IES) the IRIS project is creating an
integrated resource information system (IRIS) for
the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) that will enable leaders, board members,
and teachers to:
- Assess student, teacher, classroom, and school effects on value-
added student learning gains; and
- Connect resources at the school, classroom, and student levels to
effectiveness in improving student learning.
IRIS will provide the kind of micro-detail currently not available in any
standard state or district data system. It will allow MPS to determine in a
systematic way "what works" in the Milwaukee education system
in terms of factors related to students (e.g., tutoring, courses), classrooms
(e.g., instructional quality, teacher content knowledge, content taught, class
size), and schools (e.g., size, extent of professional community, use of
instructional coaches, resources dedicated to instructional improvement).
This goal can be achieved by using statistical modeling techniques to identify
factors that have an impact on student learning gains, holding a variety of
other factors constant at various levels of the education system.
Using IRIS, MPS will have the ability to collect the kind of data needed
for "what works" analyses, such as:
- Uses of resources by educational strategy at the school level;
- Provision of professional development resources at the district and
school levels;
- Teachers' instructional practices and measures of the content that
teachers actually teach; and
- School-level factors such as the degree of professional community,
instructional leadership.
The long-term objective of IRIS is not only to modify the MPS
budgeting system so it is more effectively linked to outcomes and cost-
effectiveness, but also to make it possible to evaluate district resource use
initiatives through a link to student learning gains. IRIS can become a
prototype for other districts—as well as states—looking to
redesign their data systems to support data-driven strategies for improving
student achievement. |
