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SchoolStat FAQs
What are SchoolStat’s features, functionality and benefits?
What business problem does SchoolStat solve?
How has the business process been improved as a result of SchoolStat?
What has been the economic benefit of SchoolStat?
Who benefits from the use of SchoolStat?
Who do I contact with a question?
What are SchoolStat’s features, functionality and benefits?
The SchoolStat system is a multi-modular application supporting the
administration and conduct of facility inspections and the processing and
presentation of inspection data.
The Inspection Administration Module permits effective and efficient scheduling
of 10 full-time inspectors, ensuring assignments are of uniform size, travel
time between sites is minimized and inspectors are rotated across the city.
The tablet-based Data Collection Module enables the mobile collection of
multiple data streams (questionnaire responses, free text entry, digital
imagery) and their integration into seamless inspection records. These records
are subsequently transferred into a central database, reviewed for
administrative completeness and stored.
The Scoring Module takes inspection data collected through questionnaire
responses and synthesizes them into numerical scores by a series of algorithms.
These scores allow comparison of different facilities across time and space,
and analysis of causal factors. Scores are further rolled up across facilities
to enable analysis of managerial effectiveness, resource allocation etc.
Finally, the SchoolStat website provides users with the ability to review both
scores and underlying inspection observations (including text comments and
digital photographs) using hyper-linked drill downs. Moreover, data may be
reviewed with multivariate queries, downloaded for further analysis or e-mailed
directly from the web site.
What business problem does SchoolStat solve?
SchoolStat is a program created to conduct periodic, non-technical, visual
inspections of all school facilities. Other programs in the New York City
Department of Education exist to provide detailed technical information
regarding school facilities, however there was an unmet need for non-technical
information, i.e., how the results of our facility maintenance and operations
efforts appear to engaged, objective visitors who are not trained facilities
professionals. Moreover, in the past the only operational information available
regarding the state of our facilities was either anecdotal or subjective or
inferential and retrospective. SchoolStat, however, provides data (not
anecdotes), uniformly, on all sites, 3-4 times each year, with the results of
each inspection available for review and action in near-real time.
Information technology is absolutely essential to the SchoolStat program -
managing an inspection program of this scope and scale would be difficult and
effective analysis of inspection results impossible, without it. The nominated
application is the means by which SchoolStat inspection data is collected and
processed in order to provide current, actionable intelligence regarding the
state of facilities across the +1,000 sites where New York City public schools
are located.
How has the business process been improved as a result of SchoolStat?
While SchoolStat's initial deployment is relatively recent, its impact has been
both immediate and far-reaching.
The potential of this program to help drive improvement in the condition of our
facilities is enormous and being realized daily, as conditions in facilities
across the city may now be and are readily compared. Managers have vastly
increased visibility of the conditions of the facilities in their charge and,
as has been noted previously, the data available to them is updated
continuously and made available in near-real time. The program has fostered
increased accountability as senior managers review their subordinates' scores
and, moreover, a healthy sense of competition and pride among managers as their
facilities' scores are visible to their peers.
In addition to increasing overall managerial effectiveness, inspection data can
be used for more detailed analysis. For example, the incidence of specific
deficiencies may be analyzed both within sites, between sites, across time or
in combination. Such analyses can guide technical decisions concerning
maintenance and custodial methods and materials. Whereas in the past such
analyses depended on discrete studies, SchoolStat now provides an on-going
source of objective data.
The possibilities are immense and will only grow as a data time series is built.
What has been the economic benefit of SchoolStat?
The primary aim of the SchoolStat project is to provide current, objective data
regarding the condition of our school facilities. This data is not intended to
help us either spend less or avoid spending more at the macro level, but to
raise our schools' facility conditions to the highest possible level given
available resources.
Thus, the total economic benefit of this project doesn't derive from cost
savings or cost avoidance, but from assistance in spending what we have as
wisely as possible, through improving managerial oversight and guiding resource
allocation.
Who benefits from the use of SchoolStat?
The ultimate beneficiaries of this project, of course, are the schoolchildren
attending New York City's public schools: they, and the Department of
Education's school-based professionals, benefit from the improved facility
conditions resulting from use of SchoolStat-collected data.
The most direct beneficiaries of the project, however, are the managers within
the Division of School Facilities who use the SchoolStat system to improve the
operations and maintenance of the facilities under their stewardship. They
benefit both from the SchoolStat project's data and from the use of the
application presenting that data.
Finally, the most direct beneficiaries of the application alone are the
administrators and inspectors of the SchoolStat unit, whose tasks would be
tremendously more onerous if the nominated application were not available to
assist them.
Who do I contact with a question?
Please contact Gaindaa Sawh at either (718) 707-4308 or
GSawh@schools.nyc.gov
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