Performance Matters™ enables data driven decision making via three integrated modules designed to address the information needs of all stakeholders in a school system who are directly or indirectly responsible for instruction and student learning.

1. Complete Student Performance System
   
2. Performance Dashboards
   
3. Standards Assessment Module (SAM™)
   

Complete Student Performance System

Performance Matters™ takes monitoring student performance to the next level.  Traditional progress monitoring tools package assessments that are administered through the program and provide reports that are produced as those assessments are scored.  Performance Matters™ provides all of the functionality of other progress monitoring tools but much more.   Through Performance Matters™, customers have access to both lagging and leading indicators.  These indicators are available via over 50 integrated reports which are designed to follow the decision making process for the user.  See Who We Can Help for examples of Performance Matters™ in action.

Lagging indicators include multiple years of high stakes test scores.  Leading indicators include a broad range of indicators including benchmark assessments.  The table below provides a summarized view of the measures included in the Performance Matters™, Progress Monitoring module.  This is only a sample of the available measures and filters.  Not listed here are measures which are unique to the individual states that we serve such as ISEL for Illinois and CELLA for Florida.  If you have other measures you would like to incorporate, we will add them.  The Progress Monitoring functionality and features are customized for your needs.

All reports in the Progress Monitoring module can be disaggregated (filtered) by all NCLB subgroups as well as special exceptionalities within those subgroups.  For example, if "hearing impaired" is an exceptionality within your special needs subgroup, the system will incorporate this additional filtering option.  In addition, if you are implementing programs within your school system that you want to tie students, teacher or schools to, you can easily add them to Performance Matters™ and track those who benefit from the program and compare their results to those who are not involved with the program.

Performance Dashboards

The Performance Dashboard is designed to provide you with a consolidated view of the information you need to be effective in your job.  The dashboards are designed to provide a consolidated snapshot of the information that teachers, principals, central office administrators and board members monitor.  Because the Performance Dashboard is integrated with the Progress Monitoring module, with the click of your mouse, you can drill through from the summary level dashboards to the detailed progress monitoring reports as needed.

Standards Assessment Module - SAM™

The Performance Matters™’ Standards Assessment Module, SAM™ provides a complete solution for the creation, development, administration and scoring of benchmark assessments.  This module encapsulates the functions which are essential for a complete assessment management system into a guided, intuitive process.  SAM™ enables Performance Matters users to:

• * Create tests from item banks
• * Create answer keys for existing tests
• * Browse and search for questions or passages
• * Browse and search for tests
• * Add items (questions, answers, passages) and so on
• * Align items to state standards or standards that are locally developed
• * Run capacity reports of item coverage by grade, subject and standard
• * Dynamically generate pre-bubbled custom answer forms
• * Automatically distribute answer forms electronically for centralized or distributed printing
• * Add test items and align to standards, cognition levels, lexile levels, blooms taxonomy and so on
• * Score test items on-line
• * Create any rubrics for scoring or select from over 100 different options
• * Score and grade results from Performance Matters scanning or third party scanning systems and more...

SAM™ has built-in integration features for third party data formats; if your school system is administering tests through other commercial products, Performance Matters has built-in integration for the native data structures of many of these products which enables you to leverage the Performance Matters™ reporting for multiple assessment instruments, no matter how or where they are administered.

Performance Matters™ can be customized for your unique needs.  For example, the published standards for your state are a part of the Performance Matters system.  In many cases, our customers, wish to customize those standards for their own purposes or to make certain standards more discreet.  Examples would include adding an assessment limit for math or a discreet grade level expectation that the state does not publish in reading.  Performance Matters SAM™ provides a very flexible framework for adding, deleting or editing standards.