Monday, July 21, 2008

“Infinite Campus” equals Infinite Heartache?

The latest slam on the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) student tracking program called “Infinite Campus” was leveled in the Kentucky New Era on July 19.

Apparently, the user unfriendly computer program made for some long delays during student registration at Christian County High School.

Infinite Campus isn’t fully up and running in all school districts, but it certainly has had growing pains during the pilot stage.

The KDE says the student tracking program is to be up in all schools by the end of 2008. Given the number of complaints to date, that isn’t looking like much of a Christmas present for those schools that have yet to tangle with this tangle.
I last wrote about Infinite Campus’ woes only a few days ago in an article about new California dropout rates from that state’s new and much more accurate student tracking system. Infinite Campus is supposed to serve a similar function here. But, if students take hours just to get registered in the new system, it is highly likely that the data it produces won’t be worth much for a long time. Of course, given that we expect Kentucky will have to own up to much lower graduation rates and much higher dropout rates once Infinite Campus is working, maybe the confusion and delay was someone’s idea from the start.

Perhaps it’s time to call California to find out how they can do this job – now – with hundreds of thousand more kids, better than we can.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My bet is that KDE is running the program with state employees who are accountable to no one. Taxpayers are funding another huge bureaucracy that wastes time and money and accomplishes nothing. Who is in charge of this program? Why isn't this person's name up in lights for all to see?

Anonymous said...

Good questions.

Ultimately, this program is crucial enough that the Kentucky Commissioner of Education and the state board should be called accountable.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the first computer program was called STI, and it is collapsing. Infinite Campus is actually a replacement, from a different contractor, who so far has not demonstrated any better performance than STI group did.