Georgia to build student data system

Georgia Statewide Student Information System notice

The Georgia Technology Authority plans to release its request for proposals Feb. 25 for a new Web-based statewide Student Information System.

Georgia's Education Department serves approximately 1.5 million prekindergarten through 12th-grade students. The information held in the SIS will be available to almost 120,000 employees, teachers, administrators and staff within 182 school districts across the state.

In part because of President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative, many states are turning to statewide systems in the education arena, including Idaho, Virginia and Oklahoma.

In Georgia, the goal is to develop a system that will extract the XML-compliant student data from the local school district systems. There are different student information systems in use across the districts from vendors including Pearson Education Technologies and Maximus Inc. Five school districts use local custom solutions.

The final SIS will replace several existing statewide systems, including the Student Record and the Free/Reduced Meal applications, and will be compliant with the federal Performance Based Data Management Initiative, which is part of NCLB.

The first phase of the SIS implementation will include deploying a data warehouse with the appropriate analytical and reporting tools and creating a unique testing identifier system that will assign and track each student's information. This phase will be complete by Dec. 31, 2005.

In the future, officials at Georgia's Education Department plan to enhance the system to address a number of additional features, including the electronic transcripts, mapping capabilities, health information, and capture data on student participation in specialized programs, such as limited English proficiency and gifted education.