THE CALPADS SHUTDOWN: This just in - CALPADS accepting data + Consultant calls for shutdown of state education database

from The Educated Guess| Posted in CALPADS

School districts can continue to upload data to CALPADS, the beleaguered student longitudinal data system.

That’s the word from the Department of Education, which says CALPADS will continue to accept information during the next two months, when the system is being overhauled and fixed.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell took the unusual step earlier this month of calling in a technical team to find defects in the system that have caused outages, errors and slowness in the system since CALPADS started up in October. As I reported on Friday, a consultant warned of system failure unless comprehensive fixes were made.

Districts have been uploading enrollment and dropout information, known as Fall 1 data. Recognizing that districts have faced headaches with CALPADS, O’Connell has extended the submission deadline indefinitely at this point. And he has said districts should not upload other types of information required under the Fall 2 and  Spring 1 submissions via CALPADS this year.

By John Fensterwald on February 20th, 2010

Consultant: shut down CALPADS now

Posted in CALPADS

CALPADS, the new comprehensive student data system on which huge hopes for school and student improvement are riding, is hobbled by serious problems.

Acting on a consultant’s report bluntly critical of state managers and of IBM, the system vendor, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has shut CALPADS down for two months and ordered all efforts focused on fixing it. The hiatus will put data collection from the state’s 1,000 districts months, if not a year, behind schedule. (See correction: CALPADS is continuing to accept some data — dropouts, enrollments — while system is being overhauled.)

O’Connell had little choice but to act quickly. After studying the system for a month, Sabot Technologies of Folsom predicted a  “high probability of system failure should the project continue on the current path”  as a result of  “anomalies, errors and defects throughout” the system.

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By John Fensterwald on February 18th, 2010