FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The U.S. Department of Education has awarded nearly half a million dollars to the University of Arkansas to establish a national center to assess and evaluate practices in rural school systems.

The National Office for Rural Measurement and Evaluation Systems (NORMES) will help school districts collect data on student demographics and academic performance and create a system where the people who need that information the most—teachers, principals and parents—can track student progress.

During the first year, researchers at NORMES will focus on developing programs and software directed at improving educational data practices and analysis in Arkansas. In the second year, the focus will extend to other states with high rural populations, including Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arizona. These states have a higher percentage of schools in rural areas than the national average, and the percentage of students living in poverty is nearly double the national average.

"We initially will focus on these rural areas that are isolated, both geographically and academically," said Sean Mulvenon, professor of educational statistics and director of NORMES.

The databases that NORMES researchers will create initially will allow superintendents and principals to access information about their students faster and in a more comprehensible form than is currently possible. In the present model, principals are responsible for providing teachers with reports (developed at NORMES) from the new systems. In the future, the goal is to extend the services directly to the individual classroom instructors.

Denise Airola, a former teacher who also worked for the Fayetteville School District, now works for NORMES and will help teachers learn to use the database effectively.

"The teachers will have more time to spend on deciding how to proceed," Airola said. "They will be able to focus on 'What does this information mean?’" instead of spending time trying to track down the information.

At the classroom level, teachers will be able to use the data provided to see how curriculum changes affect student achievement, not just in one year, but over the course of several years. Eventually, the database will contain each student’s comprehensive scholastic record, allowing teachers to assess a student’s overall progress within the state school system.

The center will extend to a national level the current system developed by the U of A’s Office of Research, Measurement and Evaluation (ORME) for use in Arkansas. The Education Data Delivery System (EDDS) is the only data system in the United States that provides student-level data on a restricted Web site as a mechanism for improving classroom instruction. The public site contains performance data at the school and district levels. The restricted site, accessible by principals and superintendents, provides access to individual student information so administrators can evaluate student progress and plan staff development.

The Arkansas Department of Education owns the EDDS database but allows access to the data through the NORMES web page http://orme.uark.edu/ for all administrators in Arkansas. The database provides information on approximately 450,000 students enrolled in Arkansas schools. The information available includes individual student performance on standardized tests, both SAT-9 and state mandated benchmark exams, data on subsidized school lunches, special student services received, race and gender.

"We are very excited at the ADE to have NORMES available for school systems in Arkansas," said Woodrow Cummins, deputy director of the Arkansas Department of Education. "With Enterprise Guide and other data systems, use of statistics and testing professors from the University of Arkansas, programming expertise in the ADE.Arkansas has taken the lead nationally in use of technology to improve delivery of education at the K-12 level."

In addition, the NORMES program will provide statistical software called Enterprise Guide to all of these school systems. NORMES researchers have been building programming to create individualized "libraries" of data to be accessed by principals and superintendents when they log on to Enterprise Guide, a SAS software product. Researchers at NORMES have used this software package to develop unique statistical applications for Arkansas educators to improve diagnostic practices at the district, school, grade and classroom level. The flexibility of Enterprise Guide software and access to the individual "libraries" allow principals and superintendents to complete additional analyses they may deem appropriate.

"This is where Denise, as director of training at NORMES, will be useful, because with her knowledge and background as a classroom educator and an administrator, she can help educate us on what to build for E-Guide. But also she can train other educators in methods where they are more comfortable," Mulvenon said.

The introduction of NORMES and Enterprise Guide represents a shift in policy on how to approach evaluation of educational systems. The NORMES researchers already have received national recognition from the National Center for Educational Accountability (NCEA) based on the diagrams and numerous inquiries about the possibility of extending this program to other states. The policy implications using "real data" and statistical models to improve education represents a t shift away from the anecdotal approach too often used in educational reform, Mulvenon said.

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