Four University of Tennessee MBA students consulted with the Chamber on issues of data collection and use by the Knox County School system. They found that current practices did not meet benchmarks, currently adopted by other school systems, that would help align achievement goals with individual student information.
For example, the students found that manual data entry of test scores administered by the state was not the preferable method of delivery; an electronic format would be more efficient and have no margin for human error.
In addition, they found that 17 data sources are used in the district to find and analyze student data. This impacts accessibility for teachers and administrators.
The UT students presented their findings to the Chamber and interested parties on April 3.
The students were Alicia Cottrell, Drew Davenport, Eric Edens, and Maxim Shabrov. As part of their MBA instruction, they spent 300 student hours on the project.
They compared Knox County standards to three benchmark institutions and one comparable district. They found Knox County Schools' practices lacking in many areas, including accessibility to data, relevancy of data to goals, connectivity between databases, and having a culture of data information systems and communication.
Read the UT students' final report about KCS data collection and use.
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