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BoE buying test data collection system
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During its monthly meeting, the Liberty County Board of Education approved a new, large-scale data warehousing computer system for tracking and analyzing students’ standardized test scores and performances. The system costs just under $45,000, which includes the initial installment and the first year of data collection. According to the board’s projected budget, the data warehouse will cost around $20,000 a year to maintain.
The system is designed to track, evaluate and compare scores from tests such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, PSAT, SAT and the Georgia High School Graduation Test, as well as writing assessments. The system will be able to hold and analyze many years’ worth of data.
Karen Grant, executive director of curriculum and instruction for Liberty County BOE, said the purpose of adopting the system is to help educators do their jobs by closely evaluating students’ progress.
“The data warehouse is to inform the instructors,” Grant  said. “You don’t know where to take a kid if you don’t know where they are.”
Grant said the system will help educators get more specific evaluations from annual standardized test results.
“The more in-depth you go, the better,” Grant said.
Many other Georgia school systems already have adopted the system, including the Dekalb, Henry and  Baldwin school systems.
Also during Tuesday’s meeting, the board approved 29 fundraisers and use-of-facilities requests, and nine out-of-state travel requests for professional conferences and workshops. The board also decided to allow distribution of an ethnicity report detailing the demographics of Liberty County schools.
After the meeting, school board members held an executive session to discuss personnel recommendations.
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