Unified Data System Strategy: Improving Student Achievement through Data Quality, Interoperability, and Governance

San Francisco Unified School District

Vision 2025’s 10 Big Shifts require actionable data

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Developing students to compete and thrive in the 21st century world

CONTENT KNOWLEDGE

Mastery of the core knowledge, critical thinking skills,and competencies outlined by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

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CAREER AND LIFE SKILLS

The knowledge, skills, and experience to navigate the “real world” and solve problems that arise in everyday life and in the workplace.

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GLOBAL, LOCAL, AND DIGITAL IDENTITY

The ability to navigate and engage in a 21st century global society that is more inclusive and interconnected.

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LEADERSHIP, EMPATHY, AND COLLABORATION

Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to positively influence and collaborate with others.

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CREATIVITY

The freedom, confidence, and ability to express their unique selves.

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SENSE OF PURPOSE & SELF

Our graduates will see themselves as filled with purpose and value.

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RESULTS FOR STUDENTS

SFUSD GRADUATE PROFILE:

Digital District Plan: 3 Levers for Transformation

REDEFINE THE

CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE

DEVELOP

CRITICAL TOOLS & SYSTEMS

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BUILD

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

DEPARTMENT OF TECHNOLOGY

Mission, Vision, & Strategy

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Department of Technology Mission Statement

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The SFUSD Department of Technology (DoT) leads SFUSD’s efforts to transform into a digital district to realize Vision 2025 and prepare every student, in every school, for college and career success in the 21st century.

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Through strategic partnerships with schools, departments, and the San Francisco community, DoT enables student, educator, and staff success through a coherent technology experience.

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Equity frame

WHY DOES TECHNOLOGY MATTER FOR EQUITY IN EDUCATION?

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We must focus on equity of access and equity of opportunity with technology.

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When used effectively to help students create, think critically, communicate, and collaborate, technology can be a powerful lever to:

• engage students in deeper learning
• empower students through agency, voice, and identity
• access content in rich, multi-modal ways
• close access, achievement, and opportunity gaps

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We are implementing a comprehensive system to achieve Vision 2025

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SFUSD STRATEGIC PLAN

DIGITAL DISTRICT PLAN

VISION 2025

TRANSFORM LEARNING. TRANSFORM LIVES.

REDEFINE CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE

DEVELOP

CRITICAL TOOLS & SYSTEMS

BUILD

RESILIENT INFRA-

STRUCTURE

SCHOOLS

DEPTS

FAMILIES

STUDENTS

WE EVALUATED TECHNOLOGY ACROSS SFUSD TO REVAMP A STRATEGY TO ACHIEVE VISION 2025

Enter a new district with a blueprint for success

prepare yourself

by doing your homework and accelerating your learning prior to arrival - reach out to your network.

match strategy to context

by listening to your community and understanding their values, pain points, aspirations, and expectations.

achieve alignment

with the district’s strategic vision and goals.

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secure early wins

that respond to the needs of your community and demonstrate what will be possible.

create alliances

to accomplish the work, especially with school leaders!

build a team

because your efforts will not be sustainable if you try to go at it alone.

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Adapted from: Watkins, M. (2003). The first 90 days: Critical success strategies for new leaders at all levels. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.

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DEPARTMENT OF TECHNOLOGY

Respond to our “tech debt” to accelerate SFUSD’s transformation into a digital district

circumvent IT

• Collective frustration in departments, schools, and IT
• “Shadow IT Departments” across district

appetite for innovation

• Rapid expansion of access to, and use of, technology has taken place in pockets
• Infrastructure of ongoing support, training, and expertise needed to sustain and fully-embrace growth

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disparate data & systems

• Disconnected and competing systems
• Discrepancies around data quality, ownership, validation, security
• Overlaps in functionality create confusion - too many systems
• Ecosystem inhibited effective support and use of data

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Communicate strategic focus areas to align the work

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Build a foundation for sustainability

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Bring coherence across technology efforts

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Target high-leverage areas of need

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Data Ecosystem Assessment

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Data ecosystem assessment

• Consider the entire data ecosystem
• Data culture
• People and processes
• Organizational structure
• Collaboration and governance
• Support and sustainability

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Broad stakeholder outreach:

50+ one-on-one interviews

8 focus groups (nearly 100 participants - principals, leaders, administrators, teachers)

DEPARTMENT OF TECHNOLOGY

Current State: SFUSD Data

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• Create a growing burden on school personnel
• Overlap in functions confuses users

APPLICATIONS & DATABASES DISTRIBUTED ACROSS SFUSD

TOO MANY APPLICATIONS AND DATABASES

INSUFFICIENT LEVEL OF INTEGRATION

CURRENT APPLICATIONS ARE VIEWED AS TOO HARD TO USE AND NOT USER-FRIENDLY

• Siloed decision-making yields siloed architecture
• Inequities across departments

• Users enter the same data into multiple systems
• Different data results from different systems

• Many applications are genuinely not user friendly
• Educators are too busy to “just pick it up”
• Limited ongoing support

DEPARTMENT OF TECHNOLOGY

SFUSD’S current state of patchwork data systems leads to added complexities and challenges for our user community

school leaders

• data received in multiple formats, through multiple vehicles (online, email, hard-copy)
• data is not real-time
• Spend valuable time logging into multiple systems

teachers

• spend valuable time logging into multiple systems
• little data is available, without their involvement in pulling together

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central office

• limited ways to aggregate data by cohort in real-time
• no self-service, must request reports from analysts
• limited tools to measure operational or programmatic performance
• lack of trust in the data when different systems report different data

public

• publicly available data is often static, updated annually

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CHALLENGES

CULTURE TRANSFORMATION

Unified Data System Strategy

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How do we transform data use in SFUSD?

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PROBLEM STATEMENT

Data

Quality

Data

Governance

Data Interoperability

Unified data ecosystem vision

• Design with the end user in mind
• Meaningful progress achievable within three years
• Timely, actionable student data & analytics for school sites
• Improved data-informed culture, practices, and capacity to use
• Data is integrated, interoperable, coherent, accurate, and available in real-time to support broader education and administration practices

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• Clear data governance processes & protocols exist and are followed
• Changes are prioritized and mutually agreed upon, not ad hoc
• Ability to integrate and analyze relationships between datasets
• Ability to integrate multiple measures
• Cross-sector and partner data sharing
• Ability to store, report, and analyze common data longitudinally
• Users are trained and supported

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DEPARTMENT OF TECHNOLOGY

Data Maturity Model

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Data maturation was catalyzed by assessment work

“emerging” data maturity

• department silos
• scarce and inconsistent training
• ad-hoc governance and privacy by department
• inconsistent quality
• annual KPI tracking
• some connections between applications and data sources
• Point-to-point batch interfaces between tools

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“optimizing” data maturity

• cross-department cooperation
• targeted training and support for functional use of tools by role
• cross-department governance and privacy policy and procedures
• department-, school-level KPIs tracked periodically
• most applications and data sources integrated
• consolidated tools around an integration architecture
• dashboards introduced

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CURRENT STATE: MARCH 2016

2017-2019 GOAL

DATA MATURITY

Ecosystem assessment: Year 1 recommendations

1. Hire staff in key roles
2. Move from siloed to centralized & collaborative IT systems management and decision-making
3. Impose 1-year moratorium on new systems to allow systems and governance analysis
4. Analyze and plan consolidation of applications around core application suites
5. Improve training and support across SFUSD
6. Plan and execute a Year 1 “Quick Win”
7. Create a comprehensive plan for moving to Level 4 optimized data maturity

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SFUSD transformed its culture of data governance

monthly steering committee

to guide data governance cross-functionally

3 spin-off working groups

established to tackle key challenge areas in SFUSD (quick wins, instructional requirements, data policies and practices)

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common language

around data governance, SFUSD’s maturity, and where we need to go

current state

of SFUSD’s data maturity is codified in the Assessment Report

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ACCOMPLISHMENTS

CULTURE TRANSFORMATION

We have made progress in the last two years

consolidation roadmap

final draft developed, based on report recommendations; and strategic consolidations are underway

data definitions

have been developed for several “calculations” that often conflict across departments

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workflows

to outline chain of custody for high profile data points (e.g. attendance)

dashboard prototype

is in-development and has shown how real-time analytics are dependent on accurate and quality data

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ACCOMPLISHMENTS

YEAR 1 RESULTS

Next steps will continue cultural transformation

finalize roadmap

to show departments and schools where we’re going and build buy-in to the plan

dashboards and analytics

to give end-users access to a tangible product that shows results of data governance work

build a data system foundation

establish a district operational data store where data is commonly defined and accessed

interoperability standards

seek partnership to build interoperability standards and web services for data integration across systems

student systems integration

and continued consolidation of enrollment, special education, gradebook, and other systems into Synergy SIS

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NEXT STEPS

NEXT STEPS

System consolidation will be foundational to cultural transformation for SFUSD

To achieve an accurate, secure, accessible, and unified data ecosystem

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NEXT STEPS

CURRENT STATE: MARCH 2016

FUTURE STATE: 2017-2019 GOAL

Data Governance

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Technology Governance

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Governance & cross-functional teams guide technology efforts and build coherence across SFUSD

Digital District Steering Committee: Cross-functional team of district leaders helps guide Digital District Plan (Charter)

Digital District Alliance Working Group: Cross-functional team of district staff refining a prototype for how SFUSD initiates, plans, executes, and sunsets technology

Data Governance: Brings coherence to data use and protocols across departments; currently involved in requirements gathering for data warehouse (Charter)

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2016-17 Technology Governance Structures

Launched a PMO to manage the SFUSD technology portfolio

• Establish consistent project management tools and methodologies
• Develop common practices for successful project implementation aligned to Digital District Plan Goals
• Intake new project requests
• Facilitate digital district project prioritization
• Manage the portfolio of technology projects (140+) across SFUSD
• Build PM capacity across DoT & SFUSD

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DEFINITION: Define the Project

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INITIATION: Develop the Plan

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EXECUTION: Complete the Plan

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TRANSITION: Close the Project

Required Components for Project Implementation

• Cross-functional design and planning
• Sponsorship
• Project Manager
• Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
• Training
• Support
• Communications
• Infrastructure/Capacity/does not create more “tech debt”
• Ongoing Sustainability Plan

Carryover + New Projects as of 3/22/17

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DoT/C&I integration

Budget Dev Tool

Disaster Recovery

Asset Mgmt

PL & BL

Data Governance

Student Data Privacy

Digital Backpack

1:1 Digital Promise

Online Registration

Google

Data Warehouse

SIS Re- implementation

System Consolidation

SFUSD site & portals

EIS Upgrade

OCOF Inventory

Bond- Student Devices

DoT Human Capital

FIS Upgrade

Device Mgmt

CCR Platform

Digital Citizenship

Single Sign On

Online Credit Recovery

KReso

Salesforce - Math/CS

LMS

Bond- Infrastructure

New Tech @ 3 MS

LEAD

Dashboard

CB- School Discovery

Assistive Tech Goalbook

Cybersecurity

Will be completed 2017/18 =

Outlined in red

Laptops 4 Educators

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M

L

XL

SNS System Consolidation

Read 180

Imagine Learning

Dreambox

Literacy Online Tool

BASIS Consolidation

DES Consolidation

FY18 digital district priorities are aligned to Vision 2025

high leverage

• Employee Information System
• Bond: Student access
• Asset Management

coherence

• Gradebook for All
• Learning Management System (online PD)
• Assistive Technology/ UDL
• Digital Backpack
• Student Data Privacy
• Personalized & Blended Learning
• Digital Citizenship
• Online Credit Recovery

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foundation

• Data Governance
• System Consolidation
• SFUSD Website & Portal
• Bond: Infrastructure
• Cybersecurity
• Disaster Recovery
• DoT/Technology Human Capital

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Connect!

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Melissa Dodd

Chief Technology Officer

San Francisco Unified School District

doddm@sfusd.edu

tech.sfusd.edu

@SFUSDdot

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