The Indiana Department of Education previewed a new dashboard for schools this week that will flag students who may not be on track to graduate when they are supposed to.
Attendance data is one of the most important factors in determining whether high school students are on track to graduate, according to IDOE.
The early warning dashboard also measures student-level data about academic performance, behavior and assessments. It uses predictive analytics to determine whether students are at mild, moderate, high or severe risk of falling behind.
Any student with less than an 80 percent chance of graduating on time is considered at-risk.
IDOE Chief Information Officer John Keller said the dashboard gives educators more insight into why students are struggling.
“Let’s suppose they’re at moderate risk for attendance,” he said, “It’ll show you all of the days they’ve ever missed and do that as a percentage of the days they’ve ever been enrolled.”
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He added that the early warning dashboard is meant to be used in combination with other strategies to help students.
“We want all schools to have a minimum level of understanding of what their data is telling them,” he said.
IDOE launched a two-month pilot of the dashboard this week with 11 districts participating.
State officials don’t know when the dashboard will be released to all districts, but they said they want to make it available as soon as possible.
Kirsten is our education reporter. Contact her at kadair@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @kirsten_adair .
