Information Services

Data Collection Initiatives

To:	Superintendents and Charter School Leaders
From:	Mitchell D. Chester, Ed.D. Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education
Date:	April 21, 2009

I would like to announce two data collection initiatives that the Department will be launching during the 2009-2010 school year. Each of these will be developed with the participation of local school districts and vetted through a pilot collection prior to statewide release. Each initiative involves the Student Information Management System (SIMS) and the Educator Personnel Information Management System (EPIMS), which gather critical student enrollment and staff employment information. The data is used to calculate each district's and charter school's local and federal funding levels, MCAS and Accountability reporting, along with the highly qualified teacher statistics. The SIMS will be expanded to include student course enrollment data and will be linked to the teacher information collected through EPIMS. Linking these two systems is critical to provide the Department, districts and schools with the analytical capability to spotlight highly effective programs in our schools. The second project will modify the SIMS application to leverage Schools Interoperability Frameworks (SIF) technology. Districts will be selected to participate and will receive federal grant money to support this initiative. Several regional information sessions have been scheduled, and I strongly recommend that you attend one with your data management staff. These sessions will provide an overview and timeline of the upcoming projects along with the opportunity for districts to volunteer for the SIMS Expansion pilot program.

Date	Time	Location
Monday, May 4th	1 p.m. to 3 p.m.	ESE Boardrooms
Monday, May 11th	10 a.m. to Noon	Springfield
Tuesday, May 12th	1 p.m. to 3 p.m.	ESE Boardrooms
Wednesday, May 13th	10 a.m. to Noon	Shrewsbury
Thursday, May 21st	10 a.m. to Noon	Duxbury

Please go to http://www.doe.mass.edu/conference/?ConferenceID=652 to register for one of the session listed above. If you have any questions, please contact the Data Collection Office at 781-338-3282 or ESEDataCollect@doe.mass.edu.

Last Updated: April 24, 2009