1st Quarter - 2004

North Carolina Department of Education

Benny Hendrix - Director - NC WISE  919-807-3415 bhendrix@dpi.state.nc.us

Wayne Price - Section Chief - NC WISE 919-807-335 lwprice@dpi.state.nc.us

WISE Support 918-807-4357   

http://www.ncwise.org/     WISE Website

http://www.ncwise.org/documents/ncwise/LEA_Handbook.pdf  WISE Handbook 2003

http://www.ncwise.org/sitemap.html     WISE Site Map

http://www.ncwise.org/documents/common_ncwise_sims/rpt_SIMS_Coord_traditional_ALL.pdf 

NC-Email Contact List

"North Carolina Window of Information on Student Education, NC WISE, is a web-based, integrated, and  tool for  managing student information and improving instruction in North Carolina schools. NC WISE provides teachers, principals, counselors, nurses, central office staff, and others with direct and immediate access to a full spectrum of data on a student's entire career in the North Carolina school system. NC WISE supports federal and state reporting requirements associated with No Child Left Behind, ABCs Accountability, School Report Card, and Closing The Gap. NC WISE is currently in use at 206 schools in six LEAs across North Carolina. Planning for statewide rollout of NC WISE is under way."

The NC WISE initiative was commenced in 2001. It is three years in the making today and is not contemplated to be completed untill December of '07. Currently six (6) LEAs with 206 school are using the system, out of 2200 NC schools (117 LEAs and 97 NC Charter schools).  The AAL software was purchased to be the single SIS in a 2000 contract. It has an Oracle back end database with multiple databases contemplated to all roll up into an eventual data warehouse (now just a data repository).  Plans call for one database for each 100,000 students growing as they come on line.

North Carolina is a historically DPI top down managed state, insofar as a statewide SIS. The WISE system is their successor to their SIMS system that was a distibuted D-Base system at each district.

North Carolina DPI plans call for a Teacher Certification System in the near future in 2004. They currently have an Assessment System capability that is planned to intereact with the NC UERS (Uniform Education Repository System - Legislative mandate)

School Districts still have a choice to join the statewide WISE system or not, and many are taking a watch and see position, especially some of the larger ones. Special Education is a separate system. AAL was not able to accomodate NC.

No "Professional Development" formal system in place at NC-DPI

Unique Student Identifier part of WISE system and is being employed in pilot phase.

Wayne Price, Section Chief for Data Administration was interviewed (Feb 2004) he stated:  "this is a six (6) year project to roll out a state hosted system, and we are going very slow to ensure success."  When asked the total cost anticipated, he declined to comment, but rumor has it over $100M. (We will verify this

Interviewed Feb 2004)