Bend-La Pine School District is Oregon’s seventh-largest public school district, comprised of 14 elementary schools, five middle schools, and five high schools. In total, the district serves 15,000 students and 65,000 residents in the three communities.
The No Child Left Behind Act requires all states to implement accountability systems across all public schools and students. Those systems must be based on challenging state standards for reading and mathematics, annual testing for students in grades 3-8, and annual statewide progress objectives to ensure that all students reach proficiency within 12 years.
Bend-La Pine sought a solution to meet the reporting requirements of the U.S. Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind Act, as well as to greatly increase the effectiveness of the data collected.
PASW Statistics was first introduced into Bend-La Pine’s technology stack in 2003 in an effort to better manage the data they collect annually.
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To effectively comply with the reporting requirements of the U.S. Department of Education’s No Child Left Behind Act, Bend-La Pine School District turned to SPSS.
"Prior to my arrival at Bend-La Pine, data treatment in the district was episodic. We had the data, but not the ability to look at it across the district for longitudinal trends and analyses," said Bob Olsen, director of systems improvement at Bend-La Pine School District.
"I had utilized PASW Statistics with a high degree of success in a previous school district and quickly implemented it into the Bend-La Pine environment to aggregate the data across schools and across years," Olsen said. "PASW Statistics has made it significantly more efficient for us to fulfill the reporting requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, as well as do a much better job of compiling and understanding the results. I now can make better use of information that had previously been disparate and, in some cases, was inaccurate."
PASW Statistics has made it significantly more efficient for us to fulfill the reporting requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, as well as do a much better job of compiling and understanding the results. I now can make better use of information that had previously been disparate and, in some cases, was inaccurate.
—Bob Olsen
Director of Systems Improvement
Bend-La Pine School District
When Olsen, a veteran of research and assessment for more than 25 years, first came on board, surveys were conducted manually—they were mailed to target audiences or handed out in person, and the results from those who chose to participate were then entered by hand. Olsen immediately upgraded that process by using PASW Statistics, and quickly noticed the improvements.
PASW Statistics made an immediate impact on the way courses were coded in the district. Due to inconsistent labels on the curricula, PASW Statistics identified a serious inaccuracy in the data used to determine which courses students were taking and passing for graduation, an issue of high interest for the school board. As a result of the findings, the entire coding system was redone.
"There’s simply no way we can gauge how much the accuracy of our data has improved but, thanks to PASW Statistics, we know the quality of the data has to be much better, and we now have a much higher confidence in it as a result," added Olsen.
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