Waterbury Public Schools realized there were several ways they could reach their goals. Two key area of focus were: Getting a handle on their dynamic and fast-changing student body in an effort to greatly improve their success in helping students fulfill their maximum potential, and the need to find the right technology partner, and the right solution.
Waterbury’s success story was recently published on IBM’s website, here are a few highlights, along with a link to the complete story and pdf download of the case study.
As the fourth-largest school district in Connecticut, United States, Waterbury Public Schools serves 18,600 students with a K-12 education. The district has never shied away from taking the initiative to enhance the educational experience it offers, so when it saw an opportunity to understand the reasons behind low student performance, it jumped at the chance.
Waterbury Public Schools met with key stakeholders within the district to understand precisely the types of insights that would be useful to them, before approaching its trusted partner NSI to help select a solution that could deliver on its requirements. Based on NSI’s recommendation, and with help from another IBM Business Partner, Phytorion, the district deployed IBM Cognos Business Intelligence software on IBM System x® 3650 servers.
“We have worked with NSI for as long as I can remember, so collaborating with them on this project was really a no-brainer,” says Will Zhuta. “They brought Phytorion into the project as experts in analytics, who proved to be a good fit for us – they adapted well to the working culture of the public education sector.”
Waterbury Public Schools now offers its school principals and high-level administrators personalized dashboards that enable them to view and interact with student data as works best for them.
“With IBM Cognos software, we are transforming the ways in which student data is used in Waterbury Public Schools,” comments Will Zhuta. “Principals can look at the latest view of student performance over their morning coffee and slice and dice it against various parameters to gain a better understanding of how to help specific students do better.”
Read the entire story on IBM’s website
