The new Agile Student Alert Monitor (SAM) is designed to greatly enhance your ability to identify areas for student performance improvement. Utilizing virtually any information a district, school, teacher or others may feel is important, the Agile SAM is an easy-to-use, pro-active way to keep a finger on the pulse of student performance.

The Agile SAM is unique in that it is not just another “report generator” – showing you what has already occurred. It is a tool you customize into a predictor of future performance potential. Like the rest of the Agile School Portal, the Agile SAM automatically pulls data from virtually any source you choose. The data is updated as often as you choose (even nightly!) and is used differently by district, school, teacher or other stakeholder depending on needs.

For example, you may choose to start with only a few information sources, perhaps your yearly state standardized assessments. You may decide to also include other regular assessments in your initial database. When evaluating student performance, one challenge is the variation in multiple assessment scales. The Agile SAM addresses this by allowing you to automatically “normalize” assessment results utilizing a common scale. Apples are now more like apples rather than oranges.

Next, the Agile SAM allows you to apply weighting to each assessment. For example, you may decide that periodic standard assessments should hold more weight than a mid-term algebra test. By normalizing and applying weighting, it is now possible to assign a potential “performance risk” predictor to each student based on specific student data. Now you have early identifiers for areas to focus on.

With the Agile SAM, you can add as many data factors as you want and decide for yourself how important each piece of data is. As you progress with using the Agile SAM, you may begin to incorporate more information on each student such as additional federal or state assessments, district assessments, school assessments, current grades, performance on assignments, attendance, discipline issues, health issues, what they eat at school, what bus they ride, demographics . . . As you can see, the list is practically endless! You may modify how SAM is used by school, grade, teacher and more.

SAM also provides an easy way to enter a plan for improvement, enter and monitor activities and track results. Tying activities back to results offers a way to see which plan activities are most beneficial. Additionally, as each piece of information is being retained in your Agile data warehouse, SAM will show progress in performance over time. This allows you to quickly and easily compare and fine-tune your predictor points to further enhance district performance.

The new Agile Student Alert Monitor (SAM) will greatly enhance your ability to identify areas for student performance improvement. Utilizing virtually any information a district may feel is important - data you already have in your school information systems - SAM is an easy-to-use, pro-active way to keep a finger on the pulse of student performance.

An example screen showing various alerts. You decide what data for SAM to monitor. SAM automatically looks at the data in your various existing information systems and brings it to you. You now have the ability to pro-actively address potential issues before they escalate into problems - without wrestling with difficult and time consuming "report writers," spreadsheets and data queries.

Simply click on the alert to drill down to more detail. So easy, ANYONE can use it!