A custom-designed database Tracking System has been developed for use by Florida school districts that choose to implement Florida’s Alternative Certification Program. Promoting paper-free management, the Tracking System permits school district personnel to efficiently document their participants’ progress in demonstrating educator competencies throughout the alternative professional preparation program.

Professional competency in each of the twelve Educator Accomplished Practices is demonstrated via the summative assessment system. A set of tasks for each practice provides evidence that all critical skills have been mastered. An online assessor/mentor uses rubrics to evaluate the level of mastery for each of the total 42 assessment tasks. The online assessor/mentor can score each rubric via the Tracking System. The Tracking System instantly calculates the resulting achievement level as “Demonstrated”, Partially Demonstrated”, or “Not Demonstrated” for each task. The online assessor/mentor can also record constructive feedback to guide the participant toward improved performance.

Next, the Tracking System collects the sets of assessment tasks that demonstrate each of the twelve Florida Educator Accomplished Practices. When each set of tasks has been completely scored, the Tracking System then calculates the participant’s achievement level on the individual practice as “Accomplished”, “Competent”, or “Not Competent”. When all 42 assessment tasks have been scored, the Tracking Tool calculates whether or not the participant has successfully demonstrated all twelve Florida Educator Accomplished Practices. All twelve must be demonstrated at either the Accomplished or Competent level – if the participant’s assessment indicates “Not Competent” on any one of the twelve practices, school district personnel cannot verify to the Florida Department of Education that the teacher has successfully completed the program.

There are four levels of access to the Tracking System, with varying capabilities. First, each participating teacher can view his or her progress on each of the 42 tasks. Second, the online assessor/mentor can view and enter data for each of the teachers assigned to the assessor/mentor. Third, the school district program coordinator can both view all participants’ records and assign groups of participants to individual assessor/mentors. At the fourth level, staff of the Florida Department of Education can view the records of all participants in all school districts throughout the entire state.

Finally, a Report Feature is available to both district and state level personnel. School district coordinators can generate reports such as “User List”, “Participant Status”, and “Participant Comparative Reports”. Reports can also be generated by practice to see which of the twelve Educator Accomplished Practices have been comprehensively demonstrated by all participants at any given time. Finally, the Florida Department of Education can generate comprehensive reports across districts from statewide data. These reports can be used to facilitate continuous improvement of the entire standards-based program.