Completion of First EPIMS Collection

To:Superintendents, Principals and Charter School Leaders
From:Mitchell D. Chester, Ed.D.
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education
Date:August 22, 2008
I am very pleased to announce that the first state-wide Education Personnel Information Management System (EPIMS) collection has closed with 100 percent district and charter school participation. I would like to thank you and your staff for your hard work and commitment to completing this important project. Through this collection we were not only able to assign a unique educator identifier for the first time in our state, we also collected other important characteristics about our educator workforce AND every class they are assigned to teach. Further, we'll soon be able to connect this information with our Licensure database, ELAR, and integrate all of this into the education data warehouse. This represents a major step forward in our efforts to use data to continuously improve results and close persistent gaps in performance. That said, I recognize how difficult it can be to gather the resources for processing, reporting and analysis that are required to accurately report this level of information. Once again, thank you. I would also like to acknowledge the dedication and hard work of the Information Services Office. They provided exceptional customer service through this brand new collection process while continuing to support our other data collections, particularly the student collection system (SIMS). Staff also reviewed the EPIMS information for each district and charter school as it was received, ensuring a high quality of data particularly for a first year collection. I look forward to working with you to get the most out of the information collected by EPIMS, including how it intersects with other dimensions of our work. Together, we will develop policies and practices that ensure our students benefit from the most effective educator workforce in the nation.



Last Updated: August 25, 2008



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