The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $4.5M to Houston Independent School District to create a data system to track individual student academic progress.

By tracking student results, teachers will be better able to identify individual strengths and weaknesses and target their support where it is needed most, helping all students to meet the high academic standards ...

Funding from the Gates Foundation will be used for ... professional-development opportunities for teachers to learn how the "value-added" data system can be used to guide planning and instruction. The grant will also support new communication systems and online tools to help share the knowledge across the district.

The system uses Dr. William Sanders' Education Value Added Assessment System (EVAAS®) model to measure student progress at the school, grade, teacher, and student levels. Using this value-added growth measurement, teachers, schools, and HISD leadership can begin interpreting the impact of the curriculum, instruction, and specific programs on student achievement.

While some chide Sanders' work, it should receive skeptical, but open support from teachers until someone offers a better option.

Kudos Houston and Sanders! We look forward to reports of your progress and accomplishments.

And kudos to those trying to generate better options for students to increase learning rates. There's room for more databased programs in schools and other learning venues.

I wonder how EVAAS works with one-on-one programs and with mobile PCs, including Tablet PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs. Please, if you know, point me to such reports. I'm interested.

Tablet PC Education Blog