For Immediate Release
July 16, 2004
ISBE and IBM Set to Launch Electronic Student Identification
System
Springfield, Ill.—The Illinois State Board of Education
approved a three-year project Wednesday that will greatly
enhance the data collection process of student information
at the district level resulting in more accurate information
being submitted to the state for school annual report
cards.
Known as the Student Information System, ISBE in conjunction
with IBM will develop and implement the tracking system
that will help districts to provide more accurate student
information for state assessments used for the Report
Card.
“SIS has been in the planning stages for several
years and is finally coming to fruition,” said State
Superintendent of Education Robert Schiller. “With
the requirements that NCLB places on states and schools,
this will help all of us improve the process of data collection
related to each of our students.”
According to Schiller, the SIS system is yet another
major portion of the agency’s initiative to create
more processes which are completely electronic and paperless,
resulting in greater efficiency. SIS promises to offer
several benefits including:
- Reducing the burden of repeated data collection by
schools and districts;
- Enhancing the use of state data by schools and districts;
- Improving the accuracy and quality of information
gathered from schools and districts;
- Enable ISBE to respond to the accountability and reporting
requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and other
federal and state mandates; and
- Increase Illinois’ capacity to follow an individual
student’s progress over time and conduct longitudinal
studies that enable educational leaders to make better
data-driven decisions regarding policies.
“ISBE and everyone involved are well aware of the
magnitude of this project,” said Schiller. “We
are all committed to maintaining the privacy, confidentiality
and security of student information. Local involvement
in all design, development and implementation decisions
will be critical to the project’s success.”
Phase I of the project (school year 2004 – 2005),
will involve two pilot projects with a consortium of selected
districts, vendors that support their local student information
systems, ISBE Student Assessment staff, and ISBE testing
contractors.
One pilot project will focus on:
- Collecting local student identification numbers and
demographic information from pilot districts;
- Assigning a unique student identifier to each student
in each pilot district (this unique identifier will
serve as the link between local student information
systems and the ISBE SIS);
- Assisting pilot districts and their local student
information vendors to ensure that these systems are
able to store the unique state student identifier and
to transfer required data to ISBE in specified data
formats;
- Developing a process to allow pilot district administrators
to request a unique state student identifier for students
entering the district during the year (This process
will include probabilistic algorithms to determine whether
or not the student already exists in the ISBE SIS, thereby
minimizing the assignment of more than one unique student
identifier to each student);
The second pilot will involve working with selected districts,
ISBE Student Assessment staff, and testing contractors
to capture individual student assessment scores for NCLB
reporting during the 2005 testing cycle.
Phase II (school year 2005 – 2006) will expand Phase
I activities statewide, building on the lessons and experiences
gained during the Phase I pilots.
Phase III (school year 2006 – 2007) will focus on
integrating existing special education and career and
technical education student systems into the ISBE SIS,
and building interfaces to other ISBE systems.
The contract with IBM over the next three years will
cost $5.7 million and will be funded equally through state
and federal sources.
ISBE collects data annually from its 4,000 schools, in
nearly 900 districts, which serve Illinois 2.2 million
students.
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