By Stan Nicol, Data Analysis and School Accountability Representative, BCHF
Years ago, the Education Management Information System (EMIS) had an error report called the “Agg-5”. This was a reporting error report schools would use to clean up their data before submitting it to the State Department. When I worked with the data, I decided that correcting the data even earlier might save time later in the school year. I built a system to analyze as much school data as possible in real time. In honor of the now- defunct Agg-5 report I called my data warehouse system “AggathA”.
AggathA went through many variations over the years. It now functions as Buckeye Community Hope Foundation’s (BCHF) data warehouse system for Ohio State & End of Course assessment data. While I use as many as six database systems, AggathA does most of the work with data directly relevant to schools in the BCHF portfolio. Each spring AggathA creates reports that allow schools to use data to improve instruction. I recently connected AggathA to our Item Analysis system. This allows grade level staff to see overall trend data along with item type frequencies and standard performance going back up to four test administration.
What is next? Like any data system, AggathA is always under development. New for the 2025-26 school year we have moved AggathA online. This move will allow the School Improvement staff to dig into assessment data in much greater detail.
This system allows the user to combine multiple schools. For example, the school Improvement Representative with multiple school assignments can combine the data to get a comprehensive view of their schools’ specific needs. Below is an example of data from multiple schools. The data shows “Writing Not Scored” detail for a group of three schools.
The data for the selected schools indicate that 23% of the Multi-Lingual Learner students copy too much of the writing prompt when taking the English Language Arts writing assessment.
The school leaders can review up to six years’ worth of OST/EOC, Attendance and Discipline data. Below is an example of trend data. The graph shows an improvement in Informational Text Writing over the last six years.
Can schools have access to this system? Yes! school leaders can “borrow” a temporary login to view their data. We can add up to ten users to the system on a temporary basis. If a school would like to have a data dig session, they simply need to reach out to me (snicol@buckeyehope.org), and I will set up their access. It will be on a first come, first served basis. I am excited to share this system with both our team at the Buckeye Hope Foundation and our schools.
The link below will provide a deeper look at AggathA’s Data Dashboard. Please take a moment to watch this video highlighting this exciting new tool available to you!