SIFA Study Shows Improved School District Achievement and Efficiency  
 
The Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIFA®) announced today the release of a third-party study detailing the operational and financial benefits realized by school districts that implement the SIF specification and use SIF-certified applications for data interoperability. The study, performed by Educational Systemics, examines the real world SIF-implementation experiences of three different school districts. Schools saw dramatic improvements in data interoperability, student achievement, funding increases, and student services. The unique challenges and objectives of each district—and the benefits realized by each--illustrate the efficacy of SIF in a variety of school settings.

Educational Systemics interviewed key educators at each of three districts – Western Heights Public School District in Oklahoma City, OK; Naperville Community Unit School District in Naperville, IL; and Liberty Public in Liberty, MO. All three districts found their investment in their SIF implementations to be extremely valuable.

“The results of this study affirm what hundreds of school districts know from experience—that SIF has come of age as a technical standard and is a mission-critical solution that improves education,” said Larry Fruth, Ph.D., Executive Director of SIFA. “We anticipate that the third-party validation of SIF presented in this report will be a powerful tool in moving schools and districts to adopt the SIF standard.”

Key Benefits

• Data Interoperability:  The study found that the most common reason districts initially consider SIF is to resolve data interoperability problems. The districts studied have found SIF to be a successful solution, effectively fulfilling their interoperability requirements. Naperville, which is still in its first year of implementation, is very optimistic about continued success, predicting that when SIF is fully implemented, data entry time will be reduced by two thirds. “We have been data rich and information poor. [After the SIF implementation is complete] we will be data rich and information rich,” said Tracy Oliver, manager of Data Operations, at Naperville.



• Student Achievement:  Western Heights is using the power of data to inform instruction. With accurate, consistent data and powerful reporting tools—now available thanks to SIF—-the district provides teachers with up-to-date student assessment data at the curriculum-standard level. This information allows educators to differentiate instruction to meet individual student needs. As a result, average total district-wide student test scores increased from 760 to 1024—more than a 30 percent gain--from 2002 to 2005. “Ninety percent of the improvement [in test scores] is highly related to this SIF implementation,” said Joe Kitchens, Western Heights Superintendent.



• State and Federal Funding Increases:  Accuracy in student counts and classifications—a result of—allows districts to capture lost state and federal funding. For example, Western Heights receives free- and reduced-lunch funds based on the reported socioeconomic status of students. The district was able to identify approximately 1,000 students per year who were previously not included in this program. The subsequent increase in funding from these “lost” students allowed Western Heights to establish full-day kindergarten and a full-day early childhood program.



• Improved Student Services:  At Liberty Public, SIF led to real-time synchronization between the student information and library systems, streamlining the process of adding new students. Librarians can now focus on serving their library student patrons rather than performing data entry chores.

"There is no chicken and egg issue when it comes to data interoperability", says Michael Jay, President of Educational Systemics, "We can ask all the right questions about the efficacy of our schools and teaching, however, managing an educational institution and learning environment without ready access to accurate data from all parts of the system is tantamount to driving blind!”

The entire “Analysis of Costs and Benefits Associated with Implementing SIF” is available on the SIFA web site http://www.sifinfo.org/upload/Docs/SIF_Cost_Benefit_Analysis_Summary_060605.pdf

About The Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIFA)
SIFA is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of over 300 schools, districts, states, the U.S. Department of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively define the rules and regulations for educational software data interoperability. The SIF Specification enables diverse applications to interact and share data efficiently, reliably, and securely regardless of the platform hosting those applications. SIFA has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit  http://www.sifinfo.org.

About Educational Systemics
For over two decades, the associates at Educational Systemics have occupied key roles at leading K-12 companies. Their collective expertise includes instructional and user interface design, market analysis, business analysis, functional specifications development, use case development, curriculum standards correlation, systems analysis, school and classroom implementation models and software interoperability standards. Educational Systemics is an industry thought leader, spearheading initiatives including their proposed NCLB Phase II, Every Child Helped Ahead (ECHA). Visit  www.edusystemics.com .