Will PowerSchool finish strong?

The school year is ending across North Carolina,  and I'm curious about how the problem-plagued debut of PowerSchool will shape this stretch.  Will schools be able to calculate grade-point averages needed to name valedictorians and salutatorians?  Will they be able to generate timely reports on which third-graders need to take summer school to meet Read to Achieve mandates?

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction and Pearson,  the education technology company that provides PowerSchool,  say they've been working all year to resolve the problems.  Let's hear from the folks in the classrooms:  Have they gotten it right?

2013 education rally in Raleigh

I'm heading to Raleigh this week to take a turn on General Assembly duty,  First stop:  today's Moral Monday protest focusing on education  (it will be livestreamed here starting at 4 p.m.).  I'm guessing the crowd won't match the one from last July,  simply because school isn't over so it's hard for out-of-towners to make the trek.

Meanwhile,  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools boosters have started their virtual rally on social media today,  in advance of Wednesday's Mecklenburg County budget hearing. The Twitter hashtag seems to be #CMSpsf,  for the new Charlotte Mecklenburg Public School Friends group that's organizing the push.

PowerSchool and NC schools: Work continues

A North Carolina blogger known as Lady Liberty 1885 turned up an interesting letter from big-district superintendents taking Pearson to task over problems with the start-up of the PowerSchool data system.

"Delays in report cards,  transcripts and attendance data have generated considerable negative attention from media,  resulting in districts being blamed for poor implementation,"  says the Feb. 21 letter from 10 superintendents,  including the leaders of CMS, Wake, Union and Gaston county schools.  "... Public goodwill has been severely damaged.  We need Pearson to accept responsibility for the challenges as we continue to address issues."

The superintendents ask Pearson to provide PowerSchool to N.C. districts at no charge next year,  saying the product will eventually be a good one but the one-year rollout,  which many of the district leaders predicted would fail,  has been a mess.  "We want a productive relationship with Pearson since the data system will be with us for many years,"  they say.

"Lady Liberty"

Neither the problems nor the frustration of district leaders is surprising.  T. Keung Hui of the News & Observer and I were among those giving  "negative media attention"  about the time that letter was written.  But Lady Liberty,  aka A.P. Dillon of Holly Springs,  a conservative/Libertarian blogger,  got some good details as part of a public records request related to PowerSchool.  She reports that she's still digging through four big boxes of documents.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superintendent Heath Morrison said this week that Pearson's follow-up has been  "very good,"  including a visit to Charlotte last week to meet with him and Chief Learning Services Officer Valerie Truesdale.  (An email to the Pearson communications department has gotten no response.)  "They acknowledged many of the issues we have discussed all year and have promised to help with issues we continue to have, such as not being able to print report cards recently,"  Morrison said in an email.

Philip Price,  chief financial officer for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction,  agrees.  "While I would not state that the larger school districts are completely happy at this time,  I will state that we have addressed the items outlined in the posted letter (most prior to the date of that letter).  As we progress through the implementation year, new issues do arise; but we are pleased that we are not experiencing repeat issues."

But don't hold your breath for that year of free service.  The previously reported cost is $7.1 million a year.  While Pearson may be forced to provide some type of refund if it fails to meet agreed-upon levels of service,  the state Board of Education is asking for $6 million to cover the cost that would otherwise fall to districts and charter schools next year,  Price said.

Here's Price's detailed explanation,  for those who can follow it:

The request to have the software to be free for another year relates to the $4 per ADM charge to sign-up for the Home Base suite of products.  There continues to be confusion as to what the $4 charge is based on.  The software, maintenance, support, data conversion, and training are all free to the school districts and charter schools for all parts of Home Base (including PowerSchool).  We subscribed to some Pearson content that strengthened the Home Base tool with Science and Social Studies material for teachers.  This content is charged to the State based on the number of systems that access the content.  We are charged on a sliding scale based on use.  If 20% of the State sign-up to use the content, the charge is $8.30 per ADM.  If 95% sign-up, the charge will be $4.00 per ADM.  The General Assembly authorized the Department to make-up any shortfall from collections by using possible reversions (with authorization from the State Budget Office).  Therefore, we could stabilize the LEA and charter price at $4.00 for the length of the contract (5 years).

Since this content is based on use, it is difficult to eliminate the charge.  The State Board has requested that the Governor recommend and the General Assembly appropriate funding ($6 million) to cover the subscription content costs.  If funded, there will be no cost to the LEA or charters to participate in Home Base.

Our contracts do include service level agreements (SLAs) that set an acceptable level of service.  If those targets are not met, we do receive credits to our maintenance and support costs.  We are currently determining the amount of those credits.  We plan on refunding Home Base participating LEAs and Charters a portion of their $4 per ADM charge (if it is not appropriated), based on the amount of credits received.

There are several incorrect statements included in the write-up around the letter.  PowerSchool was designed and is supporting the entire State (the comments state that it was never intended to support the whole state). CEDARS has nothing to do with PowerSchool other than the fact that data will come from PowerSchool to CEDARS.  The contract w/Pearson does cover all the costs for implementation.

Details on N.C. PowerSchool problems

The glitches in North Carolina's school data system are intensely interesting to some readers and deadly dull to others,  depending on how much they affect your life. This post is for the first group.

Teachers,  administrators and parents around the state have been complaining about the new system since the start of the school year.  Keung Hui with the News & Observer got state officials' attention with a story last week detailing some of the frustrations,  including those in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.  The state is now asking Pearson to refund some of the agreed-on $7.1 million first-year fee because of the problems.

Hui and I had both been asking our districts for details on the ongoing problems.  Wake County Public Schools came through first. After the story ran,  Philip Price,  the Department of Public Instruction official in charge of PowerSchool,  provided this response to the Wake issues,  which are similar to those detailed by CMS this week.

For those trying to follow the twists and turns, here's Price's take on the issues and solutions,  followed by the CMS list provided by data analyst Jay Parker.

From Price: 

We have gone through the list of issues from Wake County and have responded to each of them below. We are happy to talk with you further about any of the items.

In short, there were no real surprises. We know that some issues exist with the system and some with the districts’ data. We are working with Pearson and with the districts to resolve all the known issues. While I see the progress of the system from planning , transition, and implementation as being very successful, the users are the individuals who rely on the system to accomplish their assignments.  Their frustrations are real and need to be addressed.  As I mentioned before, we know problems will continue to surface as we progress through this transition year.  The key is to minimize (or better eliminate) problems from recurring.  I can say that we are doing an excellent job in that area, and we are doing all of this within budget.

Athletic Eligibility – At this time, DPI has not provided the ability for a district to run eligibility for athletics for students in PowerSchool

·              The athletic eligibility requirements for North Carolina do require development work for our version of PowerSchool .  This was known when the contract was signed.  The scheduled delivery date is in March 2014.  The fall eligibility was based on data in NC Wise.  To accommodate the spring eligibility, 3 reports were created to review attendance, grades, and residency.  Only those determined to be ineligible are listed on the report.  The districts were able to review those students to determine if they also should be eligible.

·              The posted schedule for upcoming releases can be found here.

Inadequate Progress - DPI has not provided the ability to generate a progress report needed for the school district so they can submit the needed data to the NC DMV

·              This is a customized report for PowerSchool (to comply with North Carolina’s law) and is scheduled to be available in the April/May timeframe

·              Meanwhile, all data necessary for LEAs to certify driver’s ed eligibility is available in PowerSchool. It does require an individual to review the student status for the following 3 areas and to manually complete the DMV required form:

• Academics – passing 70% of courses
• Dropout – haven’t dropped out
• Discipline – haven’t participated in specific disciplinary infractions like bringing incendiary device to campus

Mid-year GPA - DPI has not provided a midyear GPA calculation and Transcript.  The current NC Weighted and NC Unweighted GPA Calculations in PowerSchool do not include Semester 1 averages for yearlong courses.  This causes inaccurate GPA information for any student who is schedule in a yearlong class.  The schools are also not able to produce an accurate class rank list.

·              The PowerSchool software does not allow grades to be included on the transcript until the course is completed.  They can  add the course to the transcript (through a specific procedure); but, the grade cannot be  included.  This is how the software works in all locations where it is used as an entities student information system.

·              School districts have requested that a grade be included before the course is complete.  There are no current requirements for mid-year GPA calculation in statute or Board policy; therefore, this was not included in the State’s required deliverables for PowerSchool.

·              Without a grade, an estimated GPA cannot be calculated.  Without an estimated GPA, you cannot create an estimated class rank.

·              DPI is researching and working with Pearson to identify the changes necessary to allow interim grades for year-long classes (not completed) and how they can be outlined on a transcript.

PMR - DPI has not been successful in providing the ability for a school district to accurately run and approve the Principals Monthly Reports

·              The PMR has been completed.  We are now working on allotment adjustments and projecting ADM for FY 2014-15.

Dropout - The Dropout Report does not exist in PowerSchool

·              The dropout report is missing two key fields from the Previous Enrollment Screen within PowerSchool.  These fields will be added during the March 14 maintenance weekend.  The fields are Dropout Reason and Dropout Verified indicating the LEA has validated the student is a dropout.

·              DPI and SAS are creating reports which include the appropriate Dropout data for review including prior year data elements that are required for the report. 

·              This all should be completed by the end of March.  This is a transition year issue and will not be the process in future years (because prior year data will be in PowerSchool).

RPG – (Retention, Promotion, Graduation) an RPG report does not exist in PowerSchool to date

·              This is a system issue.  This report compares where a student was the previous year with where they are this year. The historical data for prior years needs to be loaded into PowerSchool to make this report useful.  Significant conversion issues have been encountered with bring in this data into PowerSchool.  We are looking at ways of correcting conversion problems or how we can utilize eSis (NC Wise) to try and avoid requiring districts to enter the data directly into PowerSchool.  This is a transitional year issue and will not be an issue in future years.

SAR - The student Activity Report does not exist in PowerSchool

·              This report requires two system issues to be resolved before it is 100% operational

·              The software needs to be able to manage cross enrollment between school districts (taking courses in multiple LEAs).  This ‘fix’ is currently in DPI quality review and, if passed, will be in production soon.  This ‘fix’ will also enable virtual school enrollment through PowerSchool (currently the registration process continues as it was in previous years).

·              Extended course attributes (properly defines courses at a detailed level) are being added to PowerSchool by Pearson.

Gradebook - Teachers assigned to a large number of sections.  The gradebook will not load for these teachers.  If it does load, it does not always function as expected.  The grade scale may not be attached, the teachers may not be able to save the grades, and they may not be able to make changes to grades that are already entered.  Dropdown boxes may not populate with the choices.  In elementary schools, the standards may or may not be listed or populate as expected. Teachers with a large number of assignments experience issues similar to teachers with large number of sections. Teachers that have had a large number of students dropped from sections experience issues similar to teachers with large numbers of sections. Grade Scales are not always attached to the sections; however, the grade scale is set up for the course appropriately in PowerSchool.  Other teachers with the same course have the grade scale attached. Poor/Slow/sluggish performance.  Users must save frequently, the saving function is slow. Grade Scales are not always attached to the sections; however, the grade scale is set up for the course appropriately in PowerSchool.  Other teachers with the same course have the grade scale attached. Gradebook freezes so it requires the teacher to shut down and restart.  Therefore, data entered and not yet saved is lost.  Also, Gradebook freezes when saving grades, so data is lost. Gradebook will not launch.

·              Issue with gradebook not loading for teachers with large number of sections should be fixed in March maintenance weekend (March 11).

·              No one has reported the other issues that Wake mentions. However, we might assume that these issues will similarly go away after the March maintenance weekend. We are asking for additional information.

·              Exception – “gradebook won’t launch” issue has not been replicated outside of Wake

EOG/EOC - EOG/EOC test scores are not in PowerSchool

·              EOC historical test scores were made available to import before 12/31/13. EOGs – Feb/March.

·              12-13 test courses were never in eSIS and will be made available to import in Feb/March.

Historical Data - No historical data for any student exists in PowerSchool from the 2002-2003 school through the 2011-2012 school year.

·              Historical data for students active in 2012-13 have been imported into Powerschool.

·              Data for students active until before 2012-13 are currently being uploaded into ODS.

At-Risk Report - The At Risk Report does not function in PowerSchool

·              More information is being requested from the school district. It appears to be the discipline part of the report that requires a software adjustment to target incidents.

NC Diploma - Not all NC Diploma tracts are present in PowerSchool

·              Future Ready Core (FRC) diploma path is available in Powerschool

·              The non-FRC paths did fail testing, but we are expecting them to pass a second round of development/testing within the next couple weeks.

NC Transcript - The NC Transcript does not display the true graduation date, but rather displays an expected date

·              Student’s actual graduation date can be entered on “student academic screen”

Historical data for transfer students - When transferring a student into WCPSS, none of the historical data for that student get transferred

·              All immunization and demographic info has been transferred

·              Historical grades and related fields will be brought over in March maintenance release provided it passes QA

If you're still reading, you're a PowerSchool die-hard. So here's what Jay Parker with CMS reported:

Athletic Eligibility

We cannot determine eligibility with the PowerSchool application at this time. The functionality does not specifically meet requirements nor does the logic on work around processes defined by DPI meet the needs of LEA’s for eligibility. CMS created local reports to meet business needs at this time.

Inadequate Progress

Districts have not been provided a procedure or report within PowerSchool  for NC DMV eligibility of student drivers.

Mid-Year graduation/GPA

The functionality does not exist within PowerSchool to produce transcripts with this mid-term criteria reflecting .5 credit and GPA calculations. At the Symposium, DPI indicated this would be provided soon for use with schools. (no ETA)

PMR

PMR functionality did not work until February 7^th, 2014 maintenance weekend, creating a timeline for districts to resolve fatal exceptions to enrollment data with approval by February 20^th. We are still not comfortable with the warnings within PMR as rendering correct logic for enrollment counts; however, we continue to analyze this each day.

Drop out Report

This does not exist at this time. I am seeing communications of this arriving soon by Ken Gattis (DPI business owner) and functionality of reporting to follow.

RPG

Retention, Promotion, Graduation report does not work at this time in PowerSchool.

SAR

School Activity Report that determines both classroom to teacher ratios and highly qualified teachers for instruction is not functional at this time. CMS has work around reports and external custom built applications performing this action. DPI has not implemented the code for this to be active.

Electronic Gradebook

We do not have the same issues as Wake due to not using the standards based features with CMS gradebooks.  The grade scales, assignments, and report cards all work, even parent portals reflect the same information.

Class rank and GPA

Both work in CMS due to the effort of reviewing and modifying historical grades.

Transcripts

There is still a transcript issue. At the last maintenance weekend, many of the corrections to course history that were made by counselors were lost in the weekend.  This means we have not been able to run new GPAs in HSs. 

Learn-at-home charter holds sessions

Supporters of North Carolina Connections Academy,  a proposed virtual charter school, will hold information sessions in Charlotte and Monroe on Wednesday.

The virtual school is one of 170 that filed letters of intent in September to apply for permission to open in 2015-16. By Dec. 6 we'll see how many follow through with a detailed application that could lead to being approved as an alternative public school.

Traditional public schools already offer online classes through N.C. Virtual Public School,  but there's teacher supervision and some required seat time.  The proposed statewide charter school,  which would be part of the Maryland-based for-profit Connections Academy chain, would use individual learning plans created with a teacher.  Students then learn from home,  with parents as  "learning coaches."  The approach is pitched as especially good for students who are far ahead of or behind classmates and can thrive on the individual approach.

The in-person information sessions will be from noon to 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Hampton Inn Monroe, 2368 Roland Drive, and from 6-8 p.m. at the Charlotte Mariott SouthPark, 2200 Rexford Road. There's also a video explaining how Connections Academy works.

Virtual charter schools have sparked debate across the country. A study by the University of Colorado's National Education Policy Center found that students in cyberschools led by K12, a different for-profit chain, didn't perform as well as counterparts in more traditional schools. In Charlotte,  Superintendent Heath Morrison has raised questions about such schools,  saying he wants Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to create its own virtual schools to ensure quality.

Connections Academy is a spinoff from Sylvan Learning tutoring company,  according to its website. There are academies in 22 states,  including South Carolina,  and Connections Education was launched in 2011 to further expand the online schools. 

"In Fall 2011, Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, acquired Connections Education establishing a leading position in the fast-growing virtual school segment and the opportunity to apply Connections Education’s skills and technologies in new segments and geographic markets," the site says.

That may bring a gulp from families and educators facing a host of start-up problems with Pearson's PowerSchool/Home Base data system.  Since the system debuted statewide this summer, CMS and other districts have faced delays in class schedules, enrollment reports,  transcripts and first-quarter report cards.  After the delay in report cards was announced last week,  education junkie and recent school board candidate Bolyn McClung clued me in to this ongoing list of "known issues"  with the system.  Looks like there's quite a bit of work left to do.

Academic growth charts offer parent guidance

The recent  "Education Nation"  summit brought a new digital toolkit for parents,  including academic "growth charts"  that spell out what kids should be learning at each grade level.

The toolkit,  which also offers guidance for parent-teacher conferences,  is also available as a mobile app.  Still to come are grade-level guidelines on social development and health and wellness.

The site,  created by NBC and Pearson,  seems useful to me,  putting the new national academic  "Common Core"  standards into plain English. But my days of monitoring homework and attending conferences are over.  I'm interested in hearing what parents and teachers think.