Apr. 23, 2018 - The Lake County, FL School District recently implemented a new academic "dashboard" software named "Performance Matters".
Click HERE for a March 15, 2018 video overview of how it works, presented by Duane Weeks of the IT Department, as interviewed by Vance Jochim of fiscal watchdog blog FiscalRangers.com.
The system provides an immediate, graphic and text reporting view of student performance by many categories and levels so all levels of administration from teacher up can see results of tests, reported incidents, absences, etc. for quick corrective action if needed.
As a retired corporate internal audit manager, I worked with and actually designed systems like this in the 1990's, so it is great to see the school system roll out such a system to understand variances from plans as they occur, not at the end of a manual reporting period. It is RARE to see any local government agency use performance metrics OR dashboard reporting systems to track performance. Monthly or weekly performance dashboards using comparable metrics are still not used by the Lake County government, the fiscal side of the Lake County School District, or most cities (I say most, because there could be one of the 14 cities in Lake County using it, but I haven't seen it).
The only other performance dashboard used in Lake County by a government agency is the annual Florida Benchmarking Consortium Report used by the cities of Tavares and Mt. Dora. The Lake County Government also paid $3000 to be in that Consortium but has not shared their report or discussed its most recent version. The Tavares City Manager recently presented portions of their report and how their Police Department compared to other similar cities.
Video by Lake County, FL fiscal watchdog blogger Vance Jochim at FiscalRangers.com.
The short link to this video is: https://youtu.be/9SGk1PDU5CE
Tavares, FL April 23, 2018
