Update as of July 1, 2023
High schools in the district have utilized the cohort tracker as a checks and balances system for certifying graduates for the 2023 Graduation Season, and the PGCPS Department of Monitoring and Accountability (M&A) has received favorable comments from various schoolhouses.
The following is a snapshot of what users had to say:
- Thank you for the development and roll-out of the [cohort tracker]. As a school-based administrator who had seniors this past year, I was able to use the tool as a one-stop shop to gather real-time data about students who were on and off grade level, [see] their progress or lack thereof during parent/student conferences, and review data quarterly for the Area Office.
- The [cohort tracker] has been a game changer. From the instructional perspective, it has allowed us to have a more accurate understanding of how many students are in each cohort, then allows us to register the student for the correct course load. From the student perspective, having a visual to show a student their personal progress has been invaluable. More often than not, students realize that the goal of graduation is not as far from their reach as they originally thought. Thank you to the entire team for all of your hard work!
- The most important benefit is that the [cohort tracker] is the only way a counselor or administrator can look up a student’s cohort [to align with the state]. School staff can cross reference a previous report with a recent report to look at differences. This allows [staff] to spot students who [may have attendance issues]. The [cohort tracker] allows counselors and administrators to access students’ testing status; that is not available on [other platforms]. The pie charts give easy breakdowns and the ability to quickly answer data questions.
- The cohort tracker provides a view of the student’s immediate progress in all aspects of the student’s academic life.
- With the tracker’s “All Students” feature, I can easily pull data on the schoolwide status of cohorts, grades, assessments, and service learning hours. This feature saves me much time and energy as before [the tracker] I would need five different data sources to compile this report. Additionally, the cohort tracker provides data I never had access to before such as overall grade and current grade status by content.
On April 24, 2023, M&A met with the PGCPS Professional School Counselor Leadership Team, which includes the supervisor of Professional School Counseling and specialists, to discuss how M&A could support counselors as they close out the 2022-2023 school year. The goal was to create a list for each high school that identified those students who were in need of summer school enrollment for graduation purposes or credit recovery.
Overall, the cohort tracker has proven to be a valuable resource. According to the Business Intelligence (BI) Reports tool, although the cohort tracker is only designed for high school staff, the usage rate far exceeds any of the other dashboards used by PGCPS. The BI houses the cohort tracker and other dashboards, and has a “Usage Tracking” dashboard. This dashboard tracks every user who logs into the BI Reports tool and which dashboards they use. Using this feature, M&A was able to directly see that the cohort tracker dashboard was used by more unique users than any other dashboard in that system.
