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Press Release

New dashboard uses SAS® software to monitor quality and quantity of public school educators

The University of North Carolina system’s new Educator Quality Dashboard provides unprecedented public access to the University’s research and trend data on the performance of North Carolina’s public school educators. Built with SAS® data visualization software, the interactive online tool (eqdashboard.northcarolina.edu) enables citizens to analyze and display data on the UNC system’s efforts to prepare more and higher quality teachers and school leaders for the state’s public schools.

Creating an Educator Quality Dashboard for educational institutions, policymakers and the public was a key recommendation of the UNC Board of Governors Subcommittee on Teacher and School Leader Quality. The result is an easy-to-use way to monitor, track and assess the performance of the UNC system and its 15 nationally accredited teacher education program. The dashboard uses SAS Visual Analytics to display multiple years of data collected for the University’s educator quality research efforts.

Users can customize the dashboard to view the progress and impact of educator quality within selected populations, geographic regions, or subject areas. They may also analyze performance indicators at the system and campus levels across a range of factors, including educator recruitment, selection, preparation and performance. The dashboard is useful for analyzing the impact of teacher-preparation program graduates on PK-12 student learning, measures associated with national accreditation, and other outcome-based indicators. The database also tracks employment outcomes and retention of beginning teachers who work in North Carolina’s public schools.

“In January 2015, the UNC Board of Governors adopted a set of recommendations intended to strengthen, focus, and, if necessary, redesign UNC’s educator-preparation programs with the aim of producing a world-class educator workforce for North Carolina,” said Alisa Chapman, UNC Vice President for Academic and University Programs. “In collaboration with SAS, UNC has successfully implemented a core recommendation: developing a public, interactive, web-based tool that ensures greater public accountability, increases transparency, and facilitates data access for all education stakeholders.”

The UNC Educator Quality Dashboard is the latest addition to the Data Dashboard presented on the UNC General Administration website (northcarolina.edu). Other dashboard tools—also developed  with SAS—provide customized views of detailed system-level and institution-specific performance data on selected core measures, including student enrollment, graduation rates, degrees conferred, research funding, facilities usage, and post-graduation employment in the state.

“UNC has established itself as a leader in transparency, and in using data to uncover new opportunities to improve the state’s education system,” said Emily Baranello, Senior Director of the SAS Education Practice. “As the state strives to attract and retain great teachers, this will provide a new and innovative way to look at North Carolina’s teaching talent pipeline.”

SAS analytics and business intelligence software is used at more than 3,000 educational institutions worldwide for teaching, research and administration. In addition, SAS offers free software for learning, teaching and research, and free digital curriculum and mobile apps. SAS has more than three decades of experience working with educational institutions.

About the University of North Carolina

The oldest public university in the nation, the University of North Carolina enrolls more than 220,000 students and encompasses all 16 of North Carolina’s public institutions that grant baccalaureate degrees, as well as the NC School of Science and Mathematics, the nation’s first public residential high school for academically gifted students.  UNC campuses support a broad array of distinguished liberal-arts programs, two medical schools and one teaching hospital, two law schools, a veterinary school, a school of pharmacy, 11 nursing programs, 15 schools of education, five schools of engineering, and a renowned arts conservatory.  The UNC Center for Public Television, with its 11-station statewide broadcast network, is also under the University umbrella.

About SAS

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 75,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®.

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