Founded in 1965, Adlai E. Stevenson High School is a four-year public high school located in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Stevenson is consistently ranked as one of the top, public, open-enrollment high schools in the nation and educates approximately 4,500 students across a 1.2 million square foot campus.
Doug Kahler, Director of Information Services, Adlai E. Stevenson High School, explained, “My department has nearly 20 employees and we’re responsible for a variety of systems, essentially everything that electrons flow through. Nowadays in organizations there’s really nothing that doesn’t depend upon technology in terms of services offered, and education is no different.”
Stevenson used a student management system which contained all vital student information including schedules, grades, and attendance. The system was originally designed for traditional percentage-based letter grades. Stevenson is known for pushing the boundaries of education and sought to shift away from this structure. The school came up with their own grading system which aims to tell a story about the educational process for a student in each course.
Stevenson first worked with another software development firm to create a custom grading system and an Interactive Report Card (IRC) with additional details such as appropriate growth and services such as mandatory targeted tutoring. After launching the first iteration of the IRC, Stevenson outgrew the firm’s ability and resources.
“We basically had a diagram on a napkin, and I recognized that we didn’t have the knowledge in-house to build this and communicate throughout our organization. We needed a partner to execute this vision.”
“Stevenson had already relied on Netrix Global for a variety of services, including managed services and security. I consider Netrix to be a trusted advisor, and we have very upfront and sometimes candid conversations. I was able to leverage the amazing relationship that I have with Netrix Global and they partnered with us to develop this system,” explained Doug.
Netrix Global has a great engagement process, listening to what Stevenson sought to accomplish
Netrix Global continues to bring quality resources & knowledgeable people
Netrix Global continues to bring quality resources & knowledgeable people
Stevenson hosts site visits in which people from across the country visit the campus to learn from the school’s achievements, including the IRC. The team has received praise for the application and frequent requests to purchase it.
“One of the things that is remarkable is the quality of people. As with any project spanning over a year and a half, we’ve had different Netrix Global people join our team, and everybody who’s joined has been just as knowledgeable as those who exited. Netrix Global continues to bring quality people, quality resources, and a deep understanding of today’s networking environment and how they can help provide the product in the manner that we expect,” said Doug.
“Working with Netrix Global has just been awesome. Everything that Netrix Global said they were able to do, they’ve done much better in terms of the functionality, quality, and security of the application. Netrix Global also really listens. They were able to take that original napkin drawing and really run with it and truly meet all of our expectations, if not exceed them in building the IRC.” After the application had been in production for several months, Stevenson conducted a secondary security review, which came back glowing. “It’s really a credit to the Netrix Global group in terms of how they built it professionally, making sure there weren’t any holes or things of that nature. It was definitely positive.”
“In less than six months, we had completed and launched a working prototype within budget” explained Doug. He went on to say, “For several decades, Stevenson has been at the forefront of the ‘Professional Learning Community’ (PLC). Everyone is part of a team, and all of our divisions have team leaders. With the PLC structure, we have great communication amongst all the departments, which really helped as we worked to meet everybody’s needs. Our leaders had a good understanding of what the faculty and parents wanted, and we were able to quickly and easily get feedback on how the system functioned.” The IRC has gone through a few iterations, with additional improvements made since the initial launch.
The IRC is used by teachers, faculty, staff, students, and parents. The application provides vital transparency and facilitates communication between all, eliminating guessing games. With the mobile-responsive app, parents can pull up report cards on a phone, tablet, or laptop and know exactly what’s happening in real-time, enabling them to take steps to course correct. The ability to constantly communicate is invaluable for all.
“In addition to amazing people, Netrix Global also has a great engagement process. They asked what we were trying to accomplish and actually listened rather than telling us what we should do. That’s critical in order to move forward and have a successful project, and Netrix Global just checks all of the boxes,” concluded Doug.
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