July 11, 2007
Director of Communications
(804) 371-2420
Julie Grimes
Public Information Officer
(804) 225-2775
Virginia has received a $6.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to enhance the commonwealth's nationally recognized Educational Information Management System (EIMS) for collecting, reporting and analyzing student data.
The grant will enable the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to move EIMS to the "next level" by developing capability within the system for the electronic exchange of student records between Virginia public schools and for school counselors and high school students to forward transcripts to participating colleges and universities. The grant also will fund the creation of an easy-to-use Web-based user interface for EIMS and additional training for teachers, school counselors and administrators who use the system. Virginia was one of 13 states to receive grants to improve or develop longitudinal-data systems.
"This award acknowledges Virginia's leadership in the use of educational data to improve teaching and learning," said Superintendent of Public Instruction Billy K. Cannaday Jr. "With this grant, EIMS will grow into an even more powerful tool for educators while further reducing the administrative burdens associated with collecting and reporting data."
The General Assembly has supported the development of EIMS through the appropriation of more than $13 million since 2004. EIMS currently provides decision-support data to educators at the state, division and school levels, allowing educators to tailor instruction to student needs. The system also allows for the electronic reporting and processing of data on enrollment, participation in testing, achievement, attendance and demographics.
EIMS also enables the commonwealth and its public schools to meet the reporting requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and is providing a model for other states in the nationwide effort to calculate more accurate graduation and dropout rates that fully account for student mobility and other factors.
Accomplishments to date include the assignment of unique identifiers to all students, integrating multiple reporting requirements into a single, statewide student-record collection and a data warehouse accessible to school division personnel that contains six years of state assessment data with the ability to disaggregate results by student subgroup and classroom.