EWIS News from DESE's Office for College, Career and Technical Education
A NEW LOOK FOR EDWIN
Edwin Analytics, the state's secure data warehouse, is getting a new look. This new version looks different and offers new features that we hope will be useful. No reports have changed, so your favorites are still there. In fact, with this upgrade, users can save favorite reports to access them easily in the future. We hope that the new user interface, the organization of reports, the enhanced search function and other features will be an improvement over the previous version. Read more about the changes below.
We hope you will find these developments useful, and thank you for all that you do.
After several unrelated disciplinary incidents leading to student suspensions, leaders in a Massachusetts high school saw an opportunity to strengthen social/emotional learning.
Educators and students at the school began coming together in various ways to make the school a more welcoming place for all students, and talk about and work on issues connected to prejudice, bias, and privilege. They hope that through this, they are making their school a place where all students feel valued.
School leaders hope to examine suspensions, attendance rates and school climate reports as they continue.
Monitor Students' Attendance and Suspensions with a new EWIS Report
Starting this year, there is a new EWIS report in Edwin. The new Attendance and Suspension Monitoring Report includes students’ EWIS risk level, their current attendance, and how many suspensions they have had, all as reported to DESE via the School Interoperability Framework (SIF). Educators can use this report as part of a thoughtful cycle of inquiry to plan or enhance student supports. The report is available to users who have access to student-level information within a school or district and are in a SIF-enabled district. For access to Edwin or the Monitoring Report, contact the directory administrator for your district.
Going Deeper on Students' Suspensions
As educators monitor students' suspensions, it can be helpful to review suspension data and suspension practices within the context of student discipline strategies. The Department has extensive resources to assist educators in navigating the student discipline landscape. The National Center for Safe and Supportive Learning Environments Website Resources is a guide prepared for Massachusetts and includes resources related to school climate and alternative disciplinary practices. See other resources at our Student Discipline website.
The Department also shares historical data on suspensions, so that users may examine trends over time, for all students and for student population groups. See the Success after High School DART (find it on the HS Indicators tab) or pull up the Disciplinary Removal Analysis report in Edwin (find it in the Enrollment & Indicators section) to understand historical data for your school or district.
The new version of Edwin, which uses Cognos version 11, is available to users now; just log into the Security Portal, choose Applications List, and select Edwin Analytics Beta. In the week of December 13, 2018, Edwin Analytics Beta will become Edwin Analytics and the current version of Edwin Analytics (in Cognos version 10) will become Edwin Analytics Legacy. Both versions will continue to exist on the Security Portal until January 3, 2019 when Edwin Analytics Legacy will be removed.
For more information about the Edwin upgrade, please download this guide to Using Edwin. To learn more about Edwin Beta, join a webinar in December.
Thirty minutes is just enough to explore the new Attendance and Suspension Monitoring report. Use this to see whose attendance is below 90%, consider why, and prioritize strategies to understand students' situations or build engagement. Or examine historical suspension trends for your school as you review students' suspensions so far this year, and consider where support may be most needed.
It could take 10 minutes to log into the Security Portal, select Edwin Beta and open favorite reports. Save them in a 'My Content' folder to find them easily in the future.
Within 5 minutes, register for an EWIS Data Use webinar.
