Chicago Public Schools Toolkit
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) (through the American Institutes for Research) came to WebFirst with a need for delivering their student survey information. The survey, developed by CPS, questions students on several school performance indicators:
Safe and respectful climate
High expectations
Student support
Social and emotional learning
CPS needed a way to deliver this information in a user-friendly format to the appropriate stakeholders (principals, school administrators, etc.). WebFirst developed a web-based system to meet the CPS goals:
Created a brand new look and feel for the survey website. WebFirst is very focused on the need for ease of navigation, timely and accurate delivery of survey data, and security.
Created Indicator graphs that correspond to the various indicators, a download area for the survey PDF, summaries of effective strategies, and promising practices. These strategies will help the school with any problem areas that they may have.
When a school ranks low on the survey for a given indicator (e.g. School Safety), our algorithm determines and returns the appropriate strategies and practices that will help the school address the issue. This algorithm is based on various criteria such as indicator scores, cutpoints, ethnicity, grades, gender, and level of focus.
We have also created a generalized searchable toolkit available to the public and school administrators. The search engine will make use of content tagging.
The site was developed using ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server technologies.
