School Performance Experts Launch Web-Based Assist

Starting today, Michigan's public schools will be able to more effectively and efficiently use student assessment scores and other important data to optimize student learning through a new Web-based system. 

Michigan schools can now subscribe to Orange Grove, an online system designed by a team of Michigan public school principals and teachers to analyze and aggregate diverse sets of school data in order to quickly and authentically optimize student learning through comprehensive school performance management.

"We developed Orange Grove after spending many years in schools experiencing firsthand the challenges principals and teachers are confronted with related to boosting student learning and engaging in authentic school improvement planning," said Andrew Henry, president and co-creator of Orange Grove. "The question we've wrestled with throughout our careers in education is 'how do we take the abundance of data generated by schools and turn it into meaningful action to drive significant, ongoing improvements in learning within a school?' Working with a variety of schools to find answers led us to develop Orange Grove, which is the first Web-based solution of its kind."

Orange Grove provides schools with easy access to their student assessment data including the MEAP, MME and other widely used learning assessment tools. As schools easily upload their data into Orange Grove, proprietary technology analyzes all available data to create graphs that identify the most critical areas for learning improvement.

Orange Grove then guides schools through the process of creating and managing action plans for improvement by seamlessly presenting options to assign tasks, build implementation schedules, and monitor progress towards goals with additional data as it becomes available. 

"With Orange Grove, for the first time we really have access to all our student performance data in one place, no more trying to figure out a data warehouse," says Leann Hedke, curriculum director at Summit Academy Schools in Flat Rock. "In addition to saving us valuable time and resources we were previously spending trying to organize data and make sense of it, Orange Grove has already helped us to identify changes we needed to make a higher priority than what we previously thought they were." 

According to Henry, Orange Grove optimizes a school's ability to change its focus from reactive school improvement planning and accountability to a more holistic approach emphasizing overall school performance and student learning management.

In addition to developing Orange Grove, Henry and his team have a deep connection to Michigan's public schools. Henry is a former teacher in Okemos Public Schools and a former director of Michigan's Center for Educational Performance and Information. In 2007 Henry founded Red Cedar Solutions Group, a team of teachers, principals, educational psychologists, and information technology experts helping schools throughout the state to analyze student assessment data and use it to create authentic and actionable school improvement plans that included monitoring and adjustment in relation to ongoing progress.

Henry said many of the insights used to develop Orange Grove came not only from his own work at various levels of the education system, but also from the input his team gets from their daily interactions with schools throughout the state.

Orange Grove is a completely online service, removing the need for schools to purchase any additional software or computers. The suggested annual school-site subscription for Orange Grove is $5,000. Interested schools are able to request a demonstration or participate in a free 30-day trial by visiting www.orangegroveschools.com.

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