New regulations set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)—requiring schools to produce disaggregated data on everything from student achievement to teacher assessment—have educators searching for ways to funnel those numbers toward improved instruction.

Now, California state officials have found a solution that promises to provide customizable, online access to assessment tools, professional development materials, and other data management resources from a centralized location.

The California Department of Education has implemented a web portal from iAssessment Inc., called the Gateway Presentation System (GPS), as part of its California Technology Assistance Project, a program to help educators better determine their level of technology proficiency.

According to iAssessment, GPS was developed as a tool that would tie the data collected by educators from across the state into one centralized location, where the data could be broken out and distributed to teachers and administrators in a safe, secure, and customized environment.

The idea is to take the overwhelming amount of data collected on everything from student achievement to standardized testing and package it in such a way that lets educators easily extract the information they need to better fulfill their individual roles, said Dan Cookson, co-founder of iAssessment.

"We provide a framework to help them manage how the data [are] distributed," Cookson said.

According to Cookson, that framework was designed with three key aspects in mind: providing access to professional development systems, making available tools for assessment, and offering a way to report data and qualify results.

Nancy Sullivan, manager of the California Department of Education's office of educational technology, said GPS already has been helpful in assessing how well-prepared teachers are for new technology integration.

Sullivan said teachers can log onto the system and find information that displays how well their current skills match up against changing requirements and those of incoming teachers.

"If you know a teacher is lacking in a certain area, you can provide and plan for much better professional development programs," Sullivan said.

Arizona uses a similar web portal from iAssessment to measure its teachers' technology proficiency. But what separates California's project is that it expands on this idea to include tools for data collection and analysis as well.

Cookson believes the program also is an effective way to help report data on school improvement. For instance, he said, educators could use the system to help determine how well grant monies were distributed and used throughout the state.

What's more, GPS recognizes that teachers are not statisticians. In fact, Cookson said, many educators are intimidated by the sheer volume of data it takes to map out certain levels of assessment and achievement—information now required under the new federal legislation.