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Tuesday, March 14, 2006

FCPS Wins 2006 CIO Magazine Enterprise Value Award

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) has been named a winner of the 2006 CIO Magazine Enterprise Value Award for its Education Decision Support Library (EDSL), a web-based electronic library of student data that supports decision making by teachers and administrators. FCPS is one of 11 organizations nationwide to be honored with the award.

The CIO Enterprise Value Awards honor companies and other organizations for their exemplary use of information technology to overcome unique business problems and to enhance the value of information technology to their operations.

EDSL, which is offered nationally to other school systems, has been used by FCPS for over six years and enables teachers and administrators to examine standardized test scores and to tailor instruction based on those results. EDSL is used by FCPS instructional personnel to assess student achievement on the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, in special education, and in programs such as English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), Title I, International Baccalaureate (IB), and Advanced Placement (AP) as well as to track attendance and monitor course enrollment. EDSL is also used to help schools comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

By making it possible for individuals to generate reports, EDSL has reduced administrative costs by 20 percent. The system has also drastically reduced the amount of time needed to distribute test results from as much as three months down to 24 hours, enabling students to retake exams they do not pass. As a result, pass rates in reading and math for minority students have risen by at least five percent.

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Note: For more information, contact Maribeth Luftglass, assistant superintendent for information technology and chief information officer, at maribeth.luftglass@fcps.edu .