What we finally found was a concept called education enterprise management (EEM). EEM is the idea that teachers, administrators, parents, and other stakeholders who need information can securely get what they need to see, when they need to see it, and in the way they want to access it. EEM is a solution to an ongoing ed tech problem: Few systems “talk” to each other, and teachers are often asked to use multiple systems with different user interfaces and multiple log-ins. As a result, teachers actually use only the one or two systems that are required for compliance.
We needed a system that was customizable enough to meet our needs and still give us the necessary data dashboards and analytics to see how all of our resources were being used and to what effect. We also wanted to look at other varying factors like attendance, teacher professional development, behavior measures, and item analysis of assessments to get a clear picture of what was working for which kids. Without thinking of this on an enterprise level, we could not do everything we needed to help our students.
That’s the idea behind EEM. For a few decades now, education technology has been primarily focused on compliance and on what some would call “ornamental” technology: hardware or software that looks cool and seems trendy but fundamentally has not changed the way we teach. Better devices don’t always translate to better education, but EEM puts and keeps the focus on instruction and student learning.
Ed tech companies and school districts have been working on integrating systems for a long time, with varying degrees of success. Part of the issue has been that technology companies usually do not think like teachers. Some of the best companies have been able to bridge the chasm between education and technology, but many others haven’t. They tend to think like programmers, designing systems to perform a certain function in a certain way. This is not always conducive to good teaching practices.
After searching for a single system to do everything my district needed, I finally found MIDAS Education. The MIDAS system is built on a single Amazon Web Services data structure and is permission- and role-based, so only those with permission can get access to the parts they need, while others are not granted access. MIDAS’s simple user interface includes an SIS, LMS, CMS, assessment, and content generator. MIDAS also allows us to configure our roll-out to meet our needs over time.
As we evolve in our use of MIDAS Education’s software, the company is evolving with us to help us look at instruction in all its aspects. We are able to see how different variables influence student learning: How does attendance relate to student performance? In what ways? And to what measurable effect? Which professional development programs have the most positive impact on student performance? Which curricular resources have the greatest positive effect on student learning? Without coordinating the data, we cannot know just how wide-ranging the impact is; we can only guess.
Not only does this type of analysis facilitate individualized instruction, it can also save a tremendous amount of money that can be reallocated to instruction. When we move fully to EEM software from MIDAS, we will be able to eliminate, and stop paying for, seven separate software systems. We are transitioning over a three-year period to full enterprise level for all of our instructional practices. When the transition is complete, we will pay roughly 40 percent of what we used to spend on software licenses for one system that does it all.
As budgets get tighter and communities ask more and more of their districts, EEM is a path to the future. It only makes sense that our Web pages, our learning management system, our student information system, and most other instructional support software is in one consolidated database. That way, we can access it through a single user interface to do what we need to do to help kids and measure whether or not it’s working the way we need it to.
Steve Boynton is the superintendent of Lincoln County Schools in Oregon.