Atlantic County ETTC
Professional Development Tracking System
100 Hours Database
Users Manual

Overview

This 100 Hours Database provides a simple interface for tracking the progress of teachers and staff towards the new Professional Development requirements for the State of New Jersey.

The Atlantic County ETTC offers database customization services separately on a per-hour basis. If your district would like to contract with the Atlantic County ETTC for the importing of existing data files, report design and/or other database adaptation, please contact us for a free estimate.

The Atlantic County ETTC will continue to improve this database software in response to feedback from school districts, but makes no commitments in terms of timing or scope for any improvements that may be forthcoming. We encourage districts to contact us with ideas, comments or suggestions. If you customize this database, and would like to share your contributions please let us know as well. The Atlantic County ETTC can be reached by phone at (609) 652-4931, by fax at (609) 748-6002 or by email at ettc@stockton.edu

Summary

The database contains six basic sections.

1. Schools Form

We recommend that districts begin with the schools section. Each school in the district should be entered on this form. The Principal's name should initially be left blank.

2. Staff Form

Information on all staff members should be entered next. We strongly advise using the Data Importing features of Microsoft Access to bring in your faculty information electronically from existing lists, rather than starting with manual data entry. Microsoft Access can bring in information from a variety of sources including:

· Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, or other spreadsheet programs
· Microsoft Word
· Text files exported from DOS-based databases, including most payroll systems
· Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, or other email programs

Staff can be assigned to various departments. (To add additional department names, enter new records in the table Departments.)

Staff information is divided into Basic and Private Sections.

The Basic Section provides an overview of the PIPs available for each person.

The Private section includes relevant dates for calculating the "5-year window" for each staff member. Once the Date Hired field has been entered, the Start of the 5-Year Period can be entered. If the staff member was hired after September 1, 2000, their calculation period will start on their hire date, otherwise it will start on September 1, 2000.

After all staff have been entered, the Schools Form can be used to assign Principals to each school.

3. PIPs Form

The Open PIPs Button starts the process of entering PIP information. The database will hold multiple PIPs per person, with each PIP lasting one year (matched with the fiscal years).

Information for the Goals, Activities and Workshop Tie-ins sections would ideally be "copied and pasted" from word-processing software.

The form includes a set of "focus areas" that might be priorities for a particular school district. Additional focus area fields can be added here if needed - be customizing the PIPs table and form.

The Print PIP Report button on the PIPs form provides a printout suitable for joint signature by the teacher and school administrator. The report follows the format proposed by New Jersey's State Professional Development Standards Board in March 2000.

4. Providers Form

This form lists the professional development providers who have provided training to staff. The School District itself needs to be listed as a provider so that in-service workshops can be tracked easily. In addition, your local ETTC, colleges, and other relevant providers from the New Jersey Professional Development Provider system can be entered here. Once again, the data importing features of Access will help reduce the need for manual data entry.

5. Professional Development Events Form

This form documents any and all organized events relevant to a school district. All inservice programs can be added here. Once an inservice workshop is registered on this form, the process of creating logs for all participants is automated. Workshops scheduled throughout the year can be entered at the start of the year if desired.

Workshops conducted by your local ETTC may be available in electronic format - as an Excel Spreadsheet perhaps - and these can be imported automatically as well.

The Add Logs subform automates the process of adding logs for participants.

For example, if your district holds an inservice workshop for 65 teachers:
1) Create the inservice in the Professional Development Events Form
2) Specify the content and the number of hours
3) Click the Clear All Selections to reset the attendance log
4) Click the check box next to the names of each person who attended the inservice
5) Finally choose the Add Selected Staff Logs button, and all the attendees will be credited for attendance, with the number of hours listed in their personal log files.

6. The Logs Form

This form provides all the raw data for the Professional Development Logs for each teacher. The filtering button (resembles a "lightning bolt") allows selection of all the logs for a particular staff member, or other sub-searches.

The Logs Form provides the opportunity to manually add 100 Hours credit for unusual items such as meeting attendance, curriculum design, self-study and other non-formal activities to meet the state requirement. The Logs Form also allows the documentation of partial completion of an event. For example, if a teacher only attends one hour of a two-hour workshop, that adjustment can be made here.

The Logs Form has two important fields that must be manually approved before the teacher receives credit toward the 100 Hours requirement.

The "Valid Date" field indicates that the event took place within the current 5-year window. (i.e. the event happened after the teacher was hired, after 9/1/00 and not during a leave of absence.) In future releases of this database, we expect to automate the checking of the 'Valid Date" field - watch for upgrades!

The "Counts Towards PIP" field indicates that this particular event is considered to be relevant to this particular teacher's PIP. This field can be customized to default to "Yes" or "No" depending on the level of control desired by the school district and teacher. Currently, it is defaulted to "No", so each logged event has to be explicitly approved before it can "count".

All events are logged, whether or not they have a valid date or they count towards the person's PIP. This allows flexibility for changes in the PIP or changes in school policy in terms of what counts.

7. The Reports Form

Three reports are provided, and many other useful reports can be created to customize this database.

Detailed Hours by Staff provides, for each teacher, a detailed list of all workshops they have participated in that count towards the requirement. (Workshops that do not have the "Valid Date" and "Counts as per PIP" fields checked in the PD Logs Form will not be counted here).

Summary Hours for Staff provides a list by teacher of the number of hours earned, the remainder of the requirement, and the costs incurred. (Workshops that do not have the "Valid Date" and "Counts as per PIP" fields checked in the PD Logs Form will not be counted here).

Summary of PIPs by School provides a synopsis of all the PIPs in the database organized by school, staff person and year. This document can be very helpful for needs assessments and in the design of professional development, particularly inservice training.

Please email us at ettc@stockton.edu if you have any questions.