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California Educational Data Processing Association |
The DataBus - Vol. 37, No. 1
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For several years now Capistrano Unified has scanned period attendance at the high schools. This has far and away saved countless hours of manually recording students period attendance on index cards. Gone are the cards. Gone are the manual reports. Gone is the drudgery of counting tick marks in small boxes on index cards. What remains: unused index cards, file cabinets, and perhaps more importantly attendance eyesight. Though the transition required dual entry, the effort was well worth the minimal trials. At this point, no one in attendance would even think of returning those days.
A system for scanning teacher course recommendations and placing these recommendations into the students' scheduling files was piloted last year at Dana Hills High School. Moreover, when students attended registration for next year the courses which the teachers had recommended already appeared in the student's schedule. The end result was a significant decrease in schedule changes. This, of course, occurred since students were more accurately placed into the courses which best suited their academic potential.
This system was conceived by district administration, designed and written in house using both the existing student systems software and scan sheets and new programs written by the department.
This is a new year. Again we are piloting the same program at Dana Hills anticipating the same successful results. Should the program continue to succeed, the same techniques may be used at other high schools in the future.
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