NC Department of Public Instruction
Home Base Suite of Applications
NewSouth provided Program and Project Management services, business analysis, and systems integration services for the NC Department of Public Instruction in the implementation of the Home Base suite of applications. This is arguably the single most aggressive K-12 technology implementation in the country. The Home Base suite of applications includes the following:
– Student Information System (based on Pearson’s PowerSchool)
– Instructional Improvement System to provide curriculum resources and classroom and benchmark assessment (based Pearson Schoolnet)
– Learning Management System (based on Pearson OpenClass)
– Educator Effectiveness System
- Educator Evaluation Module
- Professional Development System Module
– Summative Assessment Delivery System (based on Pearson TestNav and Pearson Access)
NewSouth employees managed vendors and designed and implemented data and systems integration services to ensure that applications shared data both in real time and in batch. NewSouth employees assisted with Data Governance and helped design the SAS data warehouse used to consolidate data from a myriad of disparate systems so that data could be integrated with other applications.
Environment:
Pearson PowerSchool, PowerTeacher, Schoolnet, OpenClass, Truenorthlogic Educator Evaluation and Professional Learning Management Systems, Oracle GoldenGate, SAS Data warehouse, Oracle 11g, Microsoft SQLServer
North Carolina Student Identification System (UID Student) and Staff Identification System (UID Staff)
NewSouth provided Program and Project Management services for the implementation of a Unique Student Identifier System for the NC Department of Public Instruction to assign a unique ID number to each of the 1.4 million PK-12 students in the public and charter schools in the State of North Carolina. NewSouth also lead the implementation of a Unique Staff Identifier System for the NC Department of Public Instruction to assign a unique ID number to each staff person working in all 115 Local Education Agencies (LEAs). Both systems were based on packaged products designed and developed by eScholar.
Environment:
eScholar UniqID for Student, eScholar UniqID for Staff, virtual and physical Wintel servers, Oracle 11g database, Oracle Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), custom Managed File Transfer Service.
North Carolina Common Education Analysis and Reporting System (CEDARS)
NewSouth provided North Carolina Common Education Analysis and Reporting System (CEDARS), which is a statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS). It is a data warehouse that houses year-over-year data from more than 30 educational systems supported by the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The system is used by the NC DPI management and program administrators along with LEA and school administrators to make data-driven decisions regarding education policies and programs to improve the overall education experience of NC PK-12 students and their teachers. CEDARS will be used as a major input source for the NC DPI’s new Instructional Improvement System (IIS) that currently being designed.
Environment:
eScholar Complete Data Warehouse (CDW), virtual and physical Wintel servers, Oracle 11g database, Oracle Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), custom Managed File Transfer Service, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) versions 10g and 11g.
Design and implementation of the Managed File Transfer Service (MFTS)
NewSouth provided Program and Project Management services for the design and implementation of the Managed File Transfer Service (MFTS), a custom developed middleware package based on Oracle’s Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology that is used as an integration vehicle to exchange data between disparate applications in the NC Department of Public Instruction. It is a secure, monitored, automated system of file transport and routing that is designed to simplify the integration of systems and improve data quality by eliminating inconsistencies in data values that are shared across multiple systems. MFTS operates 24/7/365 less scheduled maintenance. One use of MFTS is to maintain synchronization of student IDs between 6 student systems that house different data types for students.
Environment:
Oracle Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Oracle 11g database
K-3 Formative Assessment
NewSouth provided Project Management services for the design, procurement, and implementation of the K-3 Formative Assessment System, a Software-as-a-Service system implementation. Included developing appropriate vendor contracts to include a Service Level Agreement that define acceptable performance and up-time metrics and remedies if not achieved. Oversaw data integration of myriad of data sources from legacy systems and vendor systems.