It's an old classroom tradition — the regular reports teachers prepare for parents on the progress of their children. But in the modern classrooms of the Addison Northwest Supervisory Union, the tradition continues in a practical, "high–tech" way — with the data–management power of FileMaker Pro, the award–winning database software application from FileMaker Inc.

Business Challenge

Located in rural Vermont, just south of Burlington, the Addison Northwest Supervisory Union is a family of four schools — Addison Central School, Ferrisburgh Central School, Vergennes Union Elementary School, and Vergennes Union High School — serving the students of the towns of Addison, Ferrisburgh, Vergennes, Waltham, and Panton. It's a small district — about 1600 students — but it's also a forward–thinking district when it comes to using technology to aid in its ongoing mission. "We were looking for a way to improve student instruction at the classroom level and track student progress on a district–wide basis," comments Educational Technology Coordinator Bob Owens. "Our teachers were using a paper–based system that worked fine for individual teachers — but there was no efficient way to analyze the results of the data."

Successful Solution

Bob is an old hand with FileMaker Pro — he's used it since 1988, and was quick to recommend it as a solution to the district's dilemma. "We developed a relational database that tied into our student management system and that was quickly embraced by our staff," he explains. "We considered using Access, but the flexibility of FileMaker Pro made it the choice for our system. We developed a FileMaker Pro solution that enabled teachers to record student progress toward locally–developed standards in the areas of literacy, math, and science. The teachers can print reports for parents or students at any time, and administrators can analyze student data across all the schools. FileMaker Pro made it easy to design a system that mirrored our paper system to make the learning curve short for the teachers while at the same time allowing for sophisticated learning functions."

The system Bob implemented consists of nine relational databases, containing more than 64,000 records — and it's been so well received that three other school districts in the area are adopting it as well. There's also smooth and easy integration between FileMaker Pro and Microsoft Excel — allowing even more flexibility in the presentation of data. "We have been exporting data to Excel for further analysis and graphing," Bob comments. I've created scripts that extract data based on student histories and move the data into Excel where we create reports for teachers and parents."

FileMaker Pro made it easy to design a system that mirrored our paper system to make the learning curve short for the teachers while at the same time allowing for sophisticated learning functions.

— Bob Owens, Education Technology Coordinator, Addison Northwest Supervisory Union