Customer stories


St. John's College High School

Private Catholic college-preparatory high school prepares for important accreditation process with FileMaker Pro 7

With a proud 154-year history of academic excellence, leadership development, and athletic accomplishment, St. John’s College High School serves a current student population of more than 1500, with a dedicated faculty and staff of approximately 100. Located in WashingtonDC, the school takes particular pride in its outstanding Junior ROTC programs – in which nearly 50 percent of the student body is enrolled. The school takes full advantage of the latest advances in information-management technology – and the latest accomplishment is a powerful curriculum mapping tool created in FileMaker Pro 7.


Business Challenge

Part of the accreditation process for any school is the documentation of what’s going on in the classrooms –not just lists of grades, not just test scores, but a careful breakdown of what each teacher is doing, what each teacher has done, and what each teacher is planning to do. This process is called curriculum mapping, and it requires the collection, storage, and organization of vast amounts of data. “We need to have a place to keep a massive amount of information that could be edited by multiple users 24 hours a day and 7 days a week,” explains Director of Technology Mel Colvin. “Without a database, you’d obviously have to do it on paper, which was the only other choice we had.”

That choice was no choice at all, as Mel quickly realized – too clumsy, too inefficient, and too slow. FileMaker Pro had a presence at the school dating back 20 years, and was the natural front runner for the curriculum-mapping application – especially when Mel realized that he’d have to design that application himself. “We called around to other schools to see what they were doing,” he recalls, “and we said ‘let’s look for a company that does this.’ But for the high school level there was none. No one had gone to the step of doing anything more with any kind of technology, whether it was a database or anything else. That’s when I decided I could do it.”

The school began migrating to FileMaker Pro 7 in 2004, upgrading its existing student information system. “We didn’t migrate on a very large scale, but for what we did, it was flawless,” Mel comments. “Before we upgraded our license to FileMaker Pro 7, I went out and bought it right off the shelf because I couldn’t wait for it any longer. I was so happy with it that I made it a point to get our license upgraded to 7. It was well worth it.” Thus upgraded, FileMaker Pro 7 formed the foundation for Mel’s curriculum mapping tool.


Successful Solution

Curriculum mapping starts with the teachers. “We break the data down into months of the school year,” Mel explains, “listing each course taught by each teacher. Each teacher then goes in and enters a month’s worth of information about that month’s objective for each course, along with how they plan to assess each student. Later they add follow-up on whether those goals were reached, including test results and explanations of what sorts of weights and measures are being used.”

This information is then cross-referenced and used to coordinate programs between relevant courses – for example, displaying how material taught in a literature course might correlate with topics addressed in a history class. “This way we aren’t all recreating the wheel when we go into the classroom,” Mel continues. “We can draw on the strengths and weaknesses of what other people in other classrooms are doing.”

The database system is always online, always accessible – but multiple levels of administrative access and careful use of user-specific drop-down menus ensure that all individuals using the system are able only to make changes they are entitled to make. Each level is assigned its own password and username, simplifying access without compromising security. The database contains about 3000 records – and once the month is over, that month’s records are frozen, preventing tampering or unauthorized after-the-fact revision.


Customer Benefits

The system greatly reduces the amount of time teachers and administrators must devote to curriculum mapping duties, and offers much greater flexibility than any paper-based system. “Our people can work on this anytime,” Mel notes. “They aren’t stuck doing it one user at a time, or only at certain times. They can work anywhere, anytime, day or night or morning, from their homes or from their offices.” Flexibility in processing the data is another advantage. “We can search and sort and merge,” continues Mel, “in ways we couldn’t do with paper.”

Mel is really just beginning to explore the enhanced features of FileMaker Pro 7, and is very impressed with what he’s discovered so far. “The thing that’s affected me most is the ability to import and export data in many different formats,” he says. “Our old student information system was a Windows-based format and we had no choice in how our data came to us, but FileMaker Pro 7 was able to read that and work well with it.”

Another FileMaker Pro 7 improvement Mel appreciates is its greater flexibility in displaying material over the web. “Before, it was easy to publish on the web,” he acknowledges, “but we didn’t have a whole lot of choice in how it looked. But FileMaker Pro 7 is much nicer and much more robust about letting us come up with custom end-user displays.”

As the school proceeds through the accreditation process, the advantages of the new FileMaker Pro 7-based curriculum mapping system are readily apparent – and not just to the teachers and administrators who use the system daily. As Mel declares, “Now all the other schools are saying ‘I want that for my school!’”


“Before we upgraded our license to FileMaker Pro 7, I went out and bought it right off the shelf because I couldn’t wait for it any longer. I was so happy with it that I made it a point to get our license upgraded to 7. It was well worth it.”

Mel Colvin, Director of Technology, St. John’s College High School



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:

Mel Colvin
Director of Technology
St. John’s College High School
202-363-2316 x3011
mcolvin@stjohns-chs.org
http://www.stjohns-chs.org


Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • Private Catholic co-educational college-preparatory high school with an emphasis on JROTC programs.
  • Based in Washington, DC
  • Approximately 1500 students
Industry
  • K-12 Education
Solutions
  • FileMaker Pro 7 curriculum-mapping database containing detailed information on objectives and accomplishments for each course offered.
Benefits
  • Database is accessible on multiple administrative levels without the need for complex password systems.
  • Information may be edited by multiple users on a 24/7 basis
  • Database eliminates the need for inefficient paper-based curriculum mapping systems.