EngageNY Portal | EngageNY

The goals of the EngageNY Portal are to:

• Make student data available to New York’s educators, students, and students’ families to support improved instruction and student learning outcomes;
• Make curriculum and instructional resources available to New York’s educators to support improved instruction and student learning outcomes, and evaluate the effectiveness of instructional initiatives;
• Make curriculum and instructional resources available to students and their families to support improved learning outcomes;
• Create sustainable and open technology that promotes innovation, flexibility, and choice, thereby enabling local educational agencies (LEAs), schools, and regional organizations to develop or procure additional applications or new functionality more rapidly and at reduced cost;
• Create a secure environment with stringent data security and privacy protections under guidelines consistent with FERPA; and
• Leverage emerging technology interoperability standards for education applications to remove barriers to innovation and support the scaling of successful tools that personalize learning.

The EngageNY Portal will provide a secure content management system, collaboration platform, and dashboard reports so that educators, students, and families can access and analyze educational data, make decisions, and take actions to improve student outcomes. For the first time, teachers and parents will be able to view achievement and other instructional information using a state-supported system. School personnel will have much quicker access to educational records as students move between P-12 programs and districts. This core functionality is scheduled for deployment in the winter.

New York’s comprehensive procurement strategy includes issuing contracts to multiple vendors for Data Dashboard Solutions that provide educators, students, and families with access to dashboard reports that include early warning system and electronic transcript features. In addition, the State has awarded a contract for Content Management and System Services to provide a single sign-on point of entry for users of the EngageNY Portal, as well as a content management system and collaboration environment to support online professional learning communities.

All educational data for the EngageNY Portal will be provided through inBloom, formerly known as the Shared Learning Collaborative, from either the State or school districts (see December 2011 Board of Regents Item). inBloom is a non-profit entity supported by a consortium of states and is organized to help increase the benefits and long-term sustainability of secure data, curriculum, and instructional improvement initiatives. The formation of inBloom was facilitated by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and has received initial funding from the Carnegie Corporation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A primary purpose of inBloom is to help promote the efficient expenditure of taxpayer funds by providing for the common needs of all participating states, including shared, secure infrastructure and services (the Shared Learning Infrastructure, or SLI) that integrate, deliver, and display educational data and curriculum resources for educators, students, and families. Participation will allow New York to focus its limited resources on the delivery of innovative data tools and curriculum/instructional resources to support our professional development and student learning goals.

Each SLC participating state and school/district will retain sole ownership of its data. Data security will be protected through legally binding agreements that ensure compliance with FERPA, provide the strictest rules for authorized access, require the collection and retention of access audit records, and are aligned with the data security policies of New York, the federal government, and the inBloom governance board. The protection of student privacy is and will remain the priority throughout the development and implementation of the EngageNY Portal. For more information about privacy and the EngageNY Portal, please see our EngageNY Portal FAQ and our Parent Privacy FAQ.