ATTACHMENT A RFP Assessment Data Management System Jan 15th, 2016 Scope of Services

Transcription

1 ATTACHMENT A RFP Assessment Data Management System Jan 15th, 2016 Scope of Services Section 1: Background and Purpose of the Request for Proposals Saint Louis Public Schools (SLPS) has been preparing students for a bright future since The District serves approximately 25,000 children in pre-kindergarten through grade 12. With approximately 80 schools/programs, including Magnet and Choice schools, SLPS has a school to fit every child s needs. Educating these students are some 2,000 instructional staff and 1,000 administrative/support staff. For more information about SLPS, visit the District s website at or follow the District on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook. With the ever-increasing demands on school districts to show positive impacts on student growth and development toward college and career goals, the demand to use effectively and efficiently academic information and performance data to assist in meeting those goals is ever increasing. SLPS is currently provisionally accredited by the State of Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. It is imperative for multiple reasons that SLPS monitor and leverage their efforts toward continued academic achievement and attainment of accreditation goals. A truly effective and efficient Assessment Data Management System (AMS) could greatly assist SLPS in this endeavor. Saint Louis Public Schools has been researching and compiling information about their desired product for some time. It is quite possible that no one vendor alone can fulfill all of the requirements of this proposal. Therefore, proposals using third-party vendors to fulfill key requirements are welcomed. Regardless, all parties must be able to work together and as seamlessly as possible. The primary vendor must meet the qualifications listed below. Scope of Services Executive Summary Components of the Assessment Management System All assessment management components described in this section must be deliverable online. The Assessment Data Management System will include the following components: General Requirements 1) A comprehensive and organized system of assessment data reporting and monitoring reports, tools and procedures to facilitate educational improvements from the student to the district level. At the high end, a reporting system that facilitates data analytics described in 4.7 item 3 is preferred. 2) Demonstration site or some means of establishing a separate practice site/sand box to load and validate data files, test system deployment, etc. prior to full implementation. 3) A comprehensive plan and timeline for system implementation, that includes training District level system staff down to the school level. 4) Dedicated account manager from the vendor. This would be one person that District super users would contact over time with implementation questions or concerns. This person would be the District s main point of contact. The client load of this account manager is up to the discretion of the vendor.

2 5) Easily maintained and implemented online Assessment Data Management System. Section 2: Minimum Qualifications All proposals received on or before the proposal due date and time and at the location specified in the RFP, will be evaluated to determine whether a prospective contractor meets the following minimum qualifications: 1) Proposer must have a minimum of one (1) year, preferably five to ten years (5 to 10) of successful experience providing products/services similar in scope to the components described in this RFP, for which they are submitting a proposal. Proposals should include a description of the size and scope of these products/services. Vendors providing services successfully to organizations of 20,000 or more students/and 1,000 or so administrative/support staff during the five to ten years are preferred. 2) Proposer must provide a list of at least three client references and their contact information. Preferred are contacts/references from organizations of 20,000 or more students. The District will contact these references at its discretion. If your proposal does not clearly meet these qualifications it will not be considered. Section 3: Program Summary and key desired functions and features In summary, the Assessment Data Management System (AMS) will provide a data management and reporting tool complete with: i. vendor provided templates/graphs/reports, ii. iii. iv. vendor and/or user developed dashboards, vendor and/or user developed multiple measures and other reports (where multiple district, state and benchmark assessment and student demographic data may be imported into the system and viewable in reports/dashboards, etc.), reports tracking/showing growth, student portfolios, longitudinal performance, cohort performance, content summary, grade level summary, item analysis, etc. v. reports at the student/group/school/district level, vi. vii. viii. ix. reports that display teacher/class performance, or disaggregated (imported and coded groups), a tool that allows users to query the data, user-defined leveled access to the system, including a super user level to manage the system within the district, and preferably tools/processes to help with predictive data analytics. Specifically the key desired functions are described below and reiterated within categories in the remainder of this document: 1) Assessment score data imports into the AMS should be tagged, where viewable by users, with SLPS/customer defined naming and date conventions. SLPS has a very active assessment calendar, with benchmark testing 3-5 times during the school year in Reading, English Language Arts, Science, Mathematics, and Social Studies. There are required State assessments, ACT, MAP GLA, MAP EOC, MAP-A, WIDA Access, etc. All of these data would be imported into the AMS. Since some benchmarks are given multiple times in the same semester, generic fall, winter or spring testing window tags are not specific enough for users to determine which assessment data are being pulled for reporting. Thus,

3 specific dates or windows of testing need to be associated with the assessment data. 2) The AMS should be able to support data imports from the Tyler SIS-K-12 system to code student demographics, student courses, grades and possibly attendance. 3) Automated nightly data loads from the District s Student Information System (Tyler SIS- K-12) to the AMS should be possible and without major errors within the first year of implementation. Keep in mind, course/class/teacher changes occur on an ongoing basis within the St. Louis Public Schools, in addition to the regular semester changes. 4) The District should be able to upload/import into the AMS in batch form assessment and student demographic data. This should be an automated process between vendors with signed agreements, and/or ad hoc data imports by high-level SLPS system users for special reports. 5) The AMS should only show district generated codes, field names, etc. where possible. These should also be the means by which staff search for data on students, staff, schools, groups, etc. SLPS tracks students and staff by SIS (Tyler SIS-K-12 ID#s) and MOSIS (State ID#s). These are the preferred means of user identification. Also due to mobility issues, a system that requires the user to search within a specific building as the point of entry will not work in a district with so many schools, students or staff. 6) The AMS must support helping high schools monitor and track student performance on the State required MAP EOC. Students can take this assessment at various times during their academic career. However, all graduates must take all of the required assessments prior to graduation. With high student mobility, it is hard for schools to keep track of MAP EOC participation. SLPS calls this a multiple measures type of report. At the minimum, this report must show each currently enrolled high school student and his/her completion/participation status on the MAP EOCs. Preferred this report would include the level of student performance (advanced, proficient, basic or below basic) and/or the scale score. 7) The AMS should be able to include numeric to categorical data types and information. 8) The AMS should be able to export user-generated reports/graphs/charts/tables into MS Excel, PDF, Word or other generally used formats for PowerPoint presentations, merged mailings, or more advanced data analysis (SAS, Tableau, etc.). 9) The AMS should include data analysis and progress monitoring capabilities for the various SLPS programs PK ) The ability of the AMS to assist schools in progress monitoring for RTI and Reading/Math Intervention is desired. SLPS started an online Individualized Academic Plan (IAP) process where teachers are able to select from drop down menus or type in unique responses to complete the IAP form. The intent of the form is to pull all available overall student assessment scores into one document or portfolio and then allow staff/teachers/intervention specialist to document identified student instructional needs, goals, intervention strategies, etc. Then staff track student/staff progress over time. Staff periodically review results and amend interventions and goals in the IAP to best support student progress and achievement. A vendor provided IAP model within the system is welcomed. 11) Special education, special tutoring, ELL and other specialized intervention groups/staff need to be able to monitor student progress and performance. Some of these students are identified through special Tyler SIS-K-12 (student information system) coding. Other groups would need to import a program participation file into the AMS to allow program

4 and student monitoring. Does the system support data entry/data uploads or imports for monitoring and updating Individualized Education Plans, Individualized Academic Plans, RTI models, Reading Intervention monitoring, etc.? 12) SLPS currently supports and educates about 2,400 English Language Learners (ELLs) from over 50 countries representing some 40 different foreign languages. It is important that the new AMS is ELL-friendly and integrates WIDA assessment data (W-APT and ACCESS for ELLs). Teachers need to be able to view proficiency levels, scale scores, and domain specific performance to understand student needs, customize goals, track growth over time, collaborate to ensure language support is embedded in district s instructional practices, be able to outline language accommodations needed for each student based on their language proficiency, be able to identify students who are meeting the targets for language growth (AMAO 1), meeting the targets for language proficiency (AMAO 2), and meeting the targets for proficiency on the state assessment (AMAO 3). Teachers also need to be able to filter groups and sort their ELLs by proficiency, monitoring status, language, etc. The ESOL Program needs to be able to generate reports via data inquiries with district, building, and grade level specific data regarding language proficiency, domain performance, language progress, language proficiency, long-term ELL students and their performance over time, and ELL services provided. The ESOL Program needs to be able to generate Title III parent letters in multiple languages (Spanish, Bosnian, Arabic, Swahili, Burmese, Nepali, and Vietnamese being the top priority). Parent letters refer to state and federally mandated annual notifications to ELL parents. One example is an AMAO letter. The letter needs to be translated from English into multiple languages and available through the platform or loaded into the platform if certain languages are not represented. The vendor should feel free to contract with a third-party to fulfill this need. This process could conceivably be completed during the start-up phase and then updated as new language translations are needed. A fully operating system would include mail merging student information and addresses to facilitate quick mailings. The St. Louis Public Schools Tyler SIS-K-12 student information system codes for ELL students in different levels of monitoring status, different groupings of ELL (M1 and M2). Staff need to be able to generate monitoring reports for all M1 and M2 students, electronically share them with all teachers working with M1 and M2 students and be able to gather their input electronically in order to monitor students who are exiting the ESOL Program per state regulations. 13) Missouri counts attendance down to the minute. An AMS that could facilitate SLPS staff monitoring of various students attendance percentages, flag those that are falling below specific levels of attendance, etc. would be preferred. As Missouri is rather unique in this requirement, this would be considered by most vendors a customized report or query. This is a preferred higher end function of the District and RFP. If the system could also send alert messages to designated key staff about student status on attendance or other similar monitored performances, would be an added bonus. 14) District and School administration staff should, with appropriate and reasonable amounts of training, be able to create custom dashboard, data extracts/queries/reports. The vendor

5 should describe professional development procedures, staff training programs, processes, etc. St. Louis Public Schools usually uses a train-the-trainer model. Any specialized online, web-based or other professional development, help-desk, support should be described. 15) It is preferred that SLPS administrative staff be able to create and save specific queries to be used repeatedly. An example would be a special report that regroups and codes students into a data extract. Item #6 above states the District must track and monitor students that have not taken required MAP EOCs prior to graduation. The District needs to track and monitor these students and assess them on the appropriate benchmarks. The list of students needs to be exported from the AMS with key demographics and then imported into the benchmark testing system so that the students can have the appropriate tests assigned and they can best prepare for the MAP EOC test. 16) The AMS should have leveled user roles that can be monitored and manipulated by a few trained and designated super users. Leveled user roles allow super users to differentiate access rights and system manipulation rights of non-super-user staff members. A District Deputy Superintendent (District-level) should have more access rights than an Assistant Principal (school level). A contracted tutoring program vendor should only have access to those students coded as being in their program. 17) The AMS should help the user monitor instructional resources. The assessments automatically assign instructional resources (IRs) to students. The assessment system keeps track of these IRs and when students complete them. There is a score given to students that complete the IRs. IR data imported into the AMS system should be reportable in a manner to help teachers monitor student completion and other related status indicators as available. 18) The AMS will be web-based. Vendors should describe any specialized server or other technical specifications or needs to fully run the system. 19) The preferred vendor would have 5-10 years of successful implementation with public school districts of 20,000 students or larger size in urban areas. Other, younger AM systems are welcome to apply. References/contacts from at least three school districts/organizations (preferably of 20,000 or more students) are required. 20) Access to a product demonstration site is preferred. This will allow SLPS staff to see how user friendly the system is and what it is capable of at an introductory level. 21) The vendor should provide an implementation timeline to meet the criteria in this RFP. 22) The vendor should provide a cost proposal that details any special/specific modules/technology that are either required or optional for effective system performance that must be purchased or can be purchased separately. Cost proposals should include costs over time. To help facilitate cost comparisons across vendors, please use 70 buildings and 25,000 students as the basis. If staff users must be considered, use 3,000 (2,000 educators and 1,000 administrative/support staff). Specifically, if the product is one inclusive platform what is the cost of the platform year 1, year 2, year 3, etc.? If the product can be purchased in modules, what are the functions of the modules, and their costs year 1, year 2, etc.? If there are specialized technology related options discussed in other sections of this document that affect performance, what are their costs? Is there a cost benefit of a longer contract agreement? Is there a price difference after initial implementation? Is there a volume student/staff cost break? If so, what is it?

6 Section 4: Scope of Services Detailed by category or function 4.1 Reporting and Data management With the goal of guiding classroom instruction, curriculum development, and instructional supports, the Assessment Management System described in this RFP must provide educators with high level general and granular skill-specific student performance results, including item analysis reports, in a timely fashion that enables educators to adjust instruction as needed. This information must be presented in a user-friendly, flexible, modifiable, and readily and easily accessible format and process. The District recognizes that the type and quality of the assessment data provided is outside the purview or control of the vendor. However, the AMS should be flexible enough to accommodate general summary data as well as data associated with individual items, strategies, descriptive information that is very detailed. Data management should be as user friendly or automated as possible. 4.1A Types of Reports 1) Proposals should include a list of the reports currently available within the proposer s application, i.e., screenshots of the various reports. 2) Reports should be able to display overall assessment performance as well as strengths and weaknesses relative to the specific standards and skills provided by the assessment vendors. Please describe costs and specialized processes, if a special data load must be included to allow use of assessment results. 3) A screening report, or some report showing changes in the performance level of students should be available. Preferable, would be a visual report showing student status changes over time. For example, student started the year as basic, at benchmark 2 the student improved to proficient and then finished the year as advanced. 4) Reports need to be available on individual assessments and across assessments (longitudinal/growth) throughout the school year relative to skills and performance. For example, if three Benchmarks are proposed, summary reports should display student performance across the benchmarks at the student, class, building, and district levels. 5) Student longitudinal reporting should be available. Student reports indicating overall performance and performance relative to skills will be maintained across grades and for each school a student attends. For example, with longitudinal reporting, a teacher planning for his/her class before school begins in September can examine the performance on the previous years Benchmarks of students in his/her incoming classes. Growth reports should be based on student growth percentiles, if possible. 6) The system must be able to archive data and reports each year so that educators may review historical reports based upon class and school configurations in previous years. 7) The District requires that individual student reports be located in a student portfolio so that educators may view all assessments that the student has taken over the course of the school year from a single point of access. 8) The District would like to develop further student individualized academic plans (IAPs). This would allow staff to monitor goals, targets, progress, and interventions implemented. If the system allows for this, that would be a plus. 9) The AMS should have reports to help with system management and clean up, etc. 10) Reports to help monitor staff usage would be preferred. 11) The AMS should have reports to help with predictive data analytics, i.e., identification of trends that help to identify students at risk or in need of acceleration, etc.

7 4.1B Level of Reporting 1) Reporting should be available at the level of the individual student, groups of students, classroom, grade level, school, and district. 2) Report functionality should allow users to perform a drill-down/roll-up on reports at all levels of hierarchy (overall to as granular as provided by the source). 3) The reports should permit educators to disaggregate data at the district, school, classroom and individual student levels according to District or State defined reporting categories. The District prefers a ready-made report template that provides this information and the capacity to build ad hoc reports/queries. 4) All reports should include the ability to sort based on the key data elements in the report, i.e., students last name (alphabetically) or according to the students scores (e.g. high to low performance on total test). 5) System usage reports and reports on user demographics will help staff monitor usage, clean up system access and better manage user accounts. 4.1C Accessibility and Timeliness of Reports 1) Reports for all assessments should be accessible online and available for printing or saving in an electronic format outside of the platform (e.g., MS Excel compatible, PDF, etc.). 2) Timely reports are critical to the success of the AMS in providing instructionally relevant information. Customized reports should also be available for online viewing and printing. These reports must also be available for saving in an electronic format outside of the platform (e.g., MS Excel compatible, WORD, PDF format, etc.). 3) All reports should also be printable, individually and in batches, in an easy-to-read format. The reports should not have awkward page breaks, orphaned paragraphs or orphaned answer choices. Proposals should indicate in what format reports are printed (e.g. MS Excel compatible, WORD, PDF, etc.). All reports must be available in a timely manner. 4) The system should allow various levels of users to have access to reports including but not limited to principals, teachers, assessment coordinators, central office staff at the District, and students. The system must allow the District to determine who has access to which reports and when they have access. Preferably, access can be controlled by report or by function. 5) Users should be able to create a query and export that data, either at a higher summary level or at the granular raw data level in MS Excel compatible or other database format. 6) Users should be able to search for student/staff/class/group data based on one or more key identifiers from almost anywhere in the system. Forcing the user to be in the correct school location to conduct the search is not efficient in a district of high mobility. 4.1D Data and System Management 1) The reporting system must be menu driven and simple to use. The ability to create or modify reports/extracts/queries at various user levels is required. 2) Usage reports are preferred. 3) Data extracts (MS Excel compatible) on demand are required.

8 4) Proposals should describe how the application supports data export and the formats supported, so the District may export from the AMS and import the data into other applications. The preferred format is MS Excel compatible. 5) The AMS should have a procedure in place for data cleanup. This entails clearly defined and systematic data validation as the data are manually loaded by super users/district into the system to prevent long delays and major fixes to faulty data loaded into the system. (SIS-K-12 student enrollment and vendor provided assessment data should process through an automated data load feature). 6) The AMS should have a user-friendly process to clean out/remove old erroneous assessment or user data in the system, including cleanup/removal or hiding old data for non-active users, i.e., archiving or removing non-active users. 7) The AMS should have a procedure in place to export all the user and assessment score data accumulated in the system for District records/use. Preferred export format is MS Excel compatible. 8) The AMS should have a procedure to assign system functions/right/privileges, by individual function to staff or groups of staff members. 9) The AMS should have a procedure that allows administrators/staff to make multiple groups of students for RTI and other remediation/acceleration work. 10) The AMS should be flexible enough to add/import other data and user formats as usage understanding and increased demand dictates. 4.2 Managing Users 1) An automatic interface between the District s Student Information System (SIS K-12) and the AMS to import/update/correct student, staff and class roster information is required. Proposals should include a brief description of the process to update student information and class rosters. This description should include the following: a. how the system imports student demographic information, class rosters and educator information from the systems used by the District, SIS K-12. The description should respond to the following questions: Can an automatic data load be set up taking the data directly from the student data management system, or must the file be manipulated prior to data loading? If file manipulation is required, what are the criteria? What are the concerns that allow for longitudinal data tracking? What are the data clean-up procedures? How often? How long does the process take for a similar sized district? Will the SLPS end-user be able to export needed files on demand to complete/facilitate the data clean-up process? 2) The AMS should have a quick and easy method of adding/deleting teachers, students, classes individually or in bulk. Note at semesters end all of the secondary classes change. In addition, due to the mobility of District students and staff, class designations are constantly changing. 3) Proposals should include a description of how user names and passwords are assigned and distributed. Proposals should include a description of the process for password recovery and answer: Can passwords be set up as a default and then required to be changed periodically? What security measures are in place? 4.3 Implementation and Ongoing Support Proposals should describe the overall approach to implementation and ongoing support provided for the proposed Component(s). The proposal should include a plan of

9 implementation timeline and key activities for roll-out starting at least by August 2016 and culminating by December Proposals should outline major steps and timelines. There is a chance that discussions and plans could start as early as June If that would affect costs, please provide this alternative timeline and cost in the proposal. 4.4 Project Management 1) Each proposer should describe the process for providing project management. 2) Implementation should include a plan for regular communication and/or resolution of system problems with the District. Some of these discussions/communications should describe: Recent revisions, future upgrades, or developments in the system. Issues with the development or implementation of the assessment data management components or delivery of the platform. Technical issues and upgrades of the servers, etc. Process and procedures to help document and pinpoint technical problems for quick resolution. 3) Each proposer should describe the process for providing summaries and reviews of customer service and technical support issues/resolution. As well as, other issues that may have occurred, including those that may affect implementation and training. 4.5 Customer Support/Technical Support 1) Proposals should describe the support materials and documentation available. These should include: An educators user s manual that is available online and printable. An administrator s user manual that is available online and printable. Online/web-based help within and outside of the application. 2) Proposals should describe the telephone support to be provided. At a minimum, customer support for users should be available via the phone/online chat from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. 3) Proposals should describe the availability of and levels of technical support that would be provided. 4) Proposals should describe the availability of technical support, and the process by which technical support would be asked to intervene or help. 4.6 Systems Training and Professional Development The proposal needs to have a comprehensive plan regarding training the District system users with a top down perspective. The District system users must understand first their roles in system set-up, maintenance, and deployment. Secondly, they need to know the options and the longterm limitations of those options. A professional development implementation plan will have to be developed that is efficient, informative, and user friendly. The District s philosophy behind professional development is train at the point of need and as much as possible until the next point of need. If the vendor already has an established relationship with the District, and the proposed system is already set up with minimal modification, the comprehensive plan should address the needed changes. 1) Proposals should include a plan for professional development with itemized costs. 2) Professional development needs to be flexibly designed to assist needy schools,

10 Academic Instructional Coaches assigned to specific schools, as well as District Administration. Differentiated professional development will need to be offered in multiple sessions and at least quarterly. 3) Ideally, the system should be user-friendly to the point that with minimal training (8-10 hours) veteran assessment management system super users can learn to navigate the system; and potentially train other district employees. 4.7 Logistics of Training and Professional Development 1) Proposals should describe a recommended method that is both cost-effective and instructionally effective for providing systems training and professional development to instructional leaders and teachers in the District for initial rollout by August 2016 and potentially finalizing rollout by December Note that it is possible that discussions about system set-up and planning could begin in June ) Proposals should describe any time needed to work with District technology staff to setup the system, and District Assessment Office training or professional development. 3) The core assumption of the professional development design must be that people learn by doing. During the professional development, participants in the training should be working hands on with data pulled from the system. An AMS that facilitates data analytics is preferred. The following are some of the professional development training and reporting of interest to help staff: Identify student learning needs by looking at assessment data. Respond to student learning needs, by assigning interventions, developing intervention plans (IAPs), etc. Monitor the effectiveness of interventions. Be able to predict which students need longer intervention, remediation, acceleration, or at risk for drop out, lower than expected performance, future intervention, etc. Determine relationships between the data to predict high stakes performance. Determine which students are potential under-achievers, should be recommended for more challenging courses to better prepare them for future college and career plans. 4.8 Systems Training 1) The proposers will provide training on the technology used and the logistics of implementing the system. 2) Proposers should outline what they consider the most effective model and schedule for training on the Components of the system. Note, the District has found that training given at the time of need works best. Staffs need to apply the training on relevant and real time data. 3) At a minimum, proposers will provide onsite training to central office and designated school staff. For example, training will be provided in how to upload student/staff/class information into the system, etc. If a train the trainer model is proposed, training must include how to deliver the training sessions to other teachers and administrators, and support materials for doing so.

11 4.9 Technology Where possible, the AMS should be a standalone product that needs little to no maintenance from District Technology staff. Where possible, staffs should be able to access the system via various platforms: chrome books, netbooks, IPADs, laptops, desktops, etc. 4.9A Proposals Should Provide an Overview of the Technology Application Proposals should describe the technology used in delivering the application on computer or other hardware. 1) This description at the least should include: A listing of the browsers (including versions) that are supported. A description of the network bandwidth requirements. A listing of the versions of any operating systems needed to work with the application. A description of the required hardware and software configuration(s) for operation of the application and storing of the data. This should also include a description of the hosting environment, memory needs, processor needs, hard drive space, etc.. A description of the third party software needed by the District and the schools to use the application; a description of any downloads to the client that are necessary, and a description of any hardware necessary for operation at the District or school level needed to optimize utilization of the application in the schools. Descriptions of any demonstration sites or practice/sand box sites to pre-test data loads and other functions prior to full implementation. 2. What are the server requirements? How many servers will be required given 25,000 students and roughly 1,000 administrative staffs? Will the vendor host or will the District need to provide a specific server(s). Can the server(s) be virtualized? If multiple servers are required, will an automated load balancer be required? What would be the additional costs? Are software load balancers supported? 4.9B Security 1) The Proposer must elaborate how their solution supports a strong security policy and provides: Appropriate privacy measures (e.g., password protection, etc.) Secure layers A process whereby information, especially personally identifiable, is transferred securely while in transport to and from educational entities over the internet or the network infrastructure 2) Proposers may present equivalent or more robust alternate security architectures and standards that provide protection against unauthorized disclosures, data transfers, modifications, or destruction whether accidental or intentional. 4.9C Backup for the Application and Database A description of the process and configuration for providing backup to the application and databases must be provided that includes: the virus protection used how student data is stored at all times such that it is not lost if there is a power outage or other disruption the redundancy built into the system, including an alternative hosting facility,

12 redundant data connections and access to additional ISPs the frequency of data backups and the storage location of application and data backups and the timing for retrieving the backup of the data and the application