GOVERNMENT

Cognos, the world leader in business intelligence (BI) and corporate performance management (CPM), announced today that Everett Public Schools is using Cognos BI software to more effectively fulfill the State of Washington's monthly student performance reporting and analysis requirements. Everett Public Schools is one of the largest school districts in the State of Washington, responsible for more than 25 K-12 schools and a total student population of over 18,000. Each month, the school district is required to provide State officials with detailed analysis reports for each student, ranging from academic performance to grants eligibility and special education requirements. The reports are part of the State of Washington's commitment to fulfilling the education standards set out by the No Child Left Behind Act, a law enacted in 2002 to bring greater accountability and flexibility to federal education programs. The district's previous reporting system was very limited in scope and made it difficult to perform ad hoc or custom reporting. Timeliness and accuracy of reports were also critical issues. It sometimes took weeks to produce reports at the field level using information that was, by that point, outdated. With Cognos, Everett Public Schools officials are now able to rapidly develop and customize up-to-the-minute student information reports that are shared and validated across all schools for data consistency and accuracy -- a critical step considering the State uses the data validated from these reports to determine annual funding allocations for each school district. Program planning and staffing has also been greatly simplified through Cognos' multi- view trends analysis and drill-down reporting capabilities, enabling officials to make faster and more confident decisions. "Everett Public Schools has an important mandate to fulfill -- one that plays a critical role in the development of every child that passes through our school system. To ensure that each student learns to high standards in a caring atmosphere, we needed a system in place where we could easily and securely share student information with all of the schools under our jurisdiction and, together, identify where we are successful, and where we are not meeting the needs of our students," said Newel S. Rice, operations and development manager at Everett Public Schools. "The ease-of-use and flexibility of our Cognos solution has had a profound and positive impact on the way we manage and report against our student information today." "The No Child Left Behind Act challenges educational institutions to identify what critical drivers impact student performance in their district, and then adjust accordingly to maximize each child's opportunity to a quality education," said Terence Atkinson, director of public sector solutions at Cognos. "With the right data and the right tools for analysis at their disposal, educators and school administrators can then take the next step to meeting national education standards, and assure that, in fact, no child does get left behind."