[seul-edu] Collecting Assessments at District Level

[Stephen Braunius <sbrauniu@zeeland.k12.mi.us>]

I continue to enjoy the discussions with this list.  Thank you all for 
continuing to look for ways to move linux into education.

As a district, we are starting to collect a large amount of assessment 
data from the local level, the State level, and the National level 
(ITBS, PLAN, etc).  Currently I have a MySQL database set up that is 
integrated with Zope to serve up the data we are collecting.  The 
problem is that I don't know that much about database planning and am 
finding that it is difficult to scale this thing over time.

Any suggestions on the formatting of a relational assessment database 
(i.e. table structures that deal with student data, test structures, and 
test data...almost a data warehouse concept?) or web enabled software 
options that are out there that allow for data entry, viewing, 
reporting, and charting?  I have checked the seul-edu list, freshmeat, 
and google.

Some really neat projects that are similar to what I am looking for are 
the State of Washington and Massachusetts web education spaces.
http://www.k12.wa.us -- look at the Ed Profile
http://www.ves.ws/nsportal.html -- Virtual Education Space

 From what I have seen, the above projects are commissioned at the State 
Level and are not publicly available packages.  Ideas?

-- 
Stephen Braunius
Director of Instructional Technology
Zeeland Public Schools - http://www.zeeland.k12.mi.us
Zeeland, Michigan