Indistar® is a web-based system implemented by a state education agency, district, or charter school organization for use with district and/or school improvement teams to inform, coach, sustain, track, and report improvement ac-tivities.
Similar to a global positioning system (GPS), Indistar® tells you where you are and helps you get to where you want to be — every child learning and every school improving. Indistar® is stocked with indicators of evidence-based practices at the district, school, and classroom levels to improve student learning. But Indistar® is also customizable, so that the client (SEA, LEA, or charter organization) can populate or enhance the system with its own indicators of effective practice. The system also accommodates rubrics for assessment of the indicators.
The client can differentiate the system to accommodate “zones” of districts or schools. For example, the system will allow for a “rapid improvement” or turnaround track that includes different indicators than a “continuous improve-ment” track.
The bottom line is that Indistar® will guide improvement teams — whether district, school, or both — through a continuous cycle of assessment, planning, implementation, and progress tracking. Focus will be clear, responsibilities assigned, efforts synchronized.
• Innovation. Indistar® is a structure to guide high-quality work by school and district teams with built-in flexibility to encourage local innovation.
• Research Alignment. Indistar’s Wise Ways® technology links each indicator to a succinct synthesis of the related research, examples, and resources.
• Capacity. Indistar® builds the district’s capacity to support the improvement of its schools while directly guiding a school’s improvement activities.
• Documentation. Indistar® provides practical documentation through built-in mechanisms for creating agendas, recording minutes, assigning responsibility, setting timelines, allocating resources, coaching, and monitoring degree of implementation.
• Operational Data. Indistar® delivers the “other side of the data equation,” the district, school, and classroom behaviors and practices that contribute to student learning. Performance must improve in order for results to improve.
• Unique to State or District. Indistar® becomes the client’s unique system, accessible through its own website, given its own name, and aligned with existing improvement initiatives.
• Electronic Reporting. Indistar® includes a client administrative page that allow for convenient monitoring of each district and school’s progress and access to electronically submitted reports. Reporting may include electronic submission of required documents to satisfy federal and state requirements.
• Progress Tracking. Indistar® provides charts that track and display progress.
What's Going On?
Leadership Team from Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School in Washington, DC, explain Capstar, DC's version of Indistar with a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMMHpzo2VLM |