K-12 INTERVIEW

This month K-12 Newsletter talks with Naomi Menikoff, president of dataMetrics Software, Inc., a privately-held company specializing in testing-related software for educational institutions.

K-12: What is your education background?

Menikoff: I have a Masters in Education with a specialty in Reading. I was a grade 3 elementary school teacher in New York City right out of college and then a reading teacher at an urban high school in Baltimore. After spending a few years at home with my young children, I had a hard time finding a permanent teaching position. I applied and got a job with NCS (now Pearson) and started to market scanning hardware and software to the education market in New England. I later took on a position with Jostens Learning, marketing computer-aided instruction. That led to forming my own company.

K-12: What made you want to be an entrepreneur?

Menikoff: I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. As a young teacher in a poverty-ridden community on the lower east side of New York, I was stymied by the critical need to provide individualized instruction and the lack of resources. My role in working with educators for NCS and Jostens made it possible to help other teachers address that very issue - with technology. An opportunity to take over a customer base of a small company that had an assessment processing program led to forming dataMetrics Software. The company was incorporated in December 1994. Its mission is to help K-12 educators use assessment data to inform instruction. I firmly believe that in order to target instruction appropriately, teachers need direct access to objective evidence of student learning - before they ever start teaching and periodically as they go through the year. I never had that when I was teaching.

K-12: Who was doing the selling?

Menikoff: I have been the primary sales person up until this past November. I concentrated on growing our user base in Massachusetts and Michigan and through two business partners: ERB (Educational Records Bureau, which has a series of challenging assessments used by many independent schools throughout the world) and Pearson (formerly through Harcourt, for their Stanford 10 and OLSAT series). This fall, we released an add-on to our web-based program to help school systems process locally developed tests with plain paper scanning. The program was so well received that I decided we should expand our marketing efforts nationally and hired a vice president of sales and marketing. That is what prompted me to reach out to the media and gain more visibility for our product.

K-12: Can you describe the program?

Menikoff: TestWiz is created primarily for K-12 schools. It is web-based and meant to be used by teachers and any other educators who are involved in curriculum and instruction. Its goal is to help make the most of assessment data, so as to avoid making the time spent in taking tests a waste of time. The main feature is that it supports viewing virtually any kind of achievement assessment with one user interface - state tests, literacy assessments, nationally standardized tests, and local tests. When viewing results, teachers are able to look at individual student performance for an individual assessment, across multiple assessments, by learning standard, by item, and with demographic indicators that they choose. Student results can be grouped in various ways. For example, this year’s teachers can see group reports on past tests for their current students.

K-12: How is the data brought in?

Menikoff: There are three ways of getting the data in. Most of our customers give us electronic files, which is very suitable for state or national tests. They don’t have to do anything but give the data to us through a secure link. That is one way of getting the data in. A second way is direct online key entry. This is perfect for teacher-scored assessments such as DIBELS and DRA. The most recent addition is our support for plain paper scanning. This is an inexpensive way for school systems to track detailed results on common benchmark and unit assessments.

K-12: Can you give me some idea of cost?

Menikoff: The cost is $3 per student per year and a minimum of $1,000. This can include import of their state assessments, one literacy-type setup with lookup tables, and unlimited locally developed tests.

K-12: Let’s say I’m a principal of a large school. What is involved in the implementation? What am I going to have to do?

Menikoff: You need to provide us with your state assessment data, if you want to view it through TestWiz. We will need your class rosters so that you can view results by this year’s teachers as well as last year’s. If you want a setup for a literacy-type assessment, we need to consult with you regarding the goals and performance level indicators. We will train you through Webex and online videos on how to set up and process locally developed tests.

K-12: When you ask them for the list of things you need from them, how easy is it to work with schools? Are they able to provide the information pretty easily?

Menikoff: The electronic files are easy because they just give that to us. Getting the rosters can sometimes take several phone calls. We need to communicate with the IT folks who control the school’s or district’s student management system. We do have a user interface capability for entering student information directly online. But the preferred method is to get the data from the student management system directly.

K-12: Who is typically your contact? Is it the IT person in the district, the principal or the curriculum person?

Menikoff: It can be any one of them. It just depends on who has an interest in using the software. Sometimes the IT people have their own funds. Some of them are very involved in curriculum decisions as they relate to technology. When marketing, we start by looking for district people in charge of assessment and evaluation. Depending on the size of the district, this can be the superintendent, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, or research and evaluation director.

K-12: Who will have access to TestWiz in the schools?

Menikoff: Cost for the software is by student. There is no limit on the number of user licenses in a school system.

K-12: What about training?

Menikoff: In the past, training has been onsite, through Webex sessions, and with topic-specific PDF documents. We are developing training videos. These follow the PDF model in that they are specific to a task - such as, generating reports with TestWiz, or printing scannable answer documents, or key entering scores for Fountas & Pinnell. They are designed to last 2 to 5 minutes each.

K-12: Have you had experiences where you have actually seen the people who are going to use the program face-to-face? Have you seen their reactions? Was there resistance?

Menikoff: We have been working directly with school systems since 1995, so we have lots of face-to-face experience. In fact, the ongoing development and evolution of the software is based on the user experience and needs.

K-12: Aside from your presence in Massachusetts, what is happening elsewhere?

Menikoff: Massachusetts is the company’s biggest base, but we have Michigan districts as well. Since the support for local assessments with plain paper scanning was released this past fall, we have been actively marketing in New York. The response has been very positive.

K-12: Would any of the testing companies want to incorporate TestWiz into what they offer?

Menikoff: We currently have two marketing arrangements: One with ERB (Educational Records Bureau). They market TestWiz to all their member school systems. The other one is with Pearson to support their standardized tests with local scanning. That scanning requires an OMR (optical mark reader), not the plain paper scanners. Forming marketing partnerships with other companies has always been a goal of mine.

K-12: Where are you going next? What are your priorities?

Menikoff: Our support for locally developed assessments currently does not include creating the assessment itself. We are in conversations with several companies that license items. We want to offer an option in TestWiz to create a test based on high quality items associated with learning standards. This option is currently in development. There will need to be an additional fee for this option.

K-12: Do you believe online assessment will become ubiquitous?

Menikoff: It’s going to be a few years before that happens. In my opinion, the adaptive test movement is also not here to stay.

K-12: Has technology in the classroom reached a tipping point where it is an integral part of the teaching and learning process as opposed to just a marginal tool used occasionally? Every year people say we’re close, but we never get there. Are we close?

Menikoff: I think we’re very close to widespread access to technology tools. I see more and more teachers using smart boards, clickers, and using the Internet to communicate with parents to search for creative lesson plans. In many instances, the students themselves are pushing the teachers to be more skilled at technology. What I contribute here is a way for teachers to look at assessment data in an easy way. They can become more comfortable with technology by seeing how it could help them rather than threaten them. In my opinion, reaching the "tipping point" has nothing to do with replacing a teacher with technology.

For information on dataMetrics Software, contact Naomi Menikoff at 800-842-0077 or Naomi@testwiz.com.

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