Ingenuity State of the Arts Progress Report 2015-2016 | Page 77

appendix / data notes
school’s rubric, but are stored in a pending file. If confirmed,

Second, including data from the CPS Budget and Talent files

the partner is added to Ingenuity’s list of vetted partners. If

allows Ingenuity to understand arts staffing levels even at

the organization does not meet the criteria for a partnership,

those district-operated schools that did not participate in

it is deleted and the Arts Liaison is notified.

the Survey. Including these data provides a more accurate
picture of arts education staffing across the district.

CPS Department of Arts Education

Ingenuity also checked the three data sets described

Ingenuity provides all data-reviewed Creative Schools

above against the Illinois State Board of Education’s (ISBE)

Certification categories to the CPS Department of Arts

Educator Licensure Information System (ELIS). This made it

Education. The Department reviews the Survey responses

possible to research the certifications and credentials of arts

for each school and flags concerns. Ingenuity and the

instructors in CPS, and to confirm the specific arts disciplines

Department then follow up with individual schools, as

these instructors were credentialed to teach.

appropriate, to confirm or correct any Survey responses.

CPS Principals

Staffing Files

The CPS Department of Arts Education contacts school

Ingenuity updated its process for reviewing and crossreferencing

staffing

data

this

year. First, Ingenuity

principals for further clarification on any unresolved issues,
correcting staffing numbers as appropriate.

obtained from CPS two Budget and Talent files: one from
the 20th day of enrollment and another from May 6th
of the same school year. Ingenuity then matched the CPS
and Creative Schools Certification staffing data sets. For
the vast majority of entries, the data aligned across the
three sources. If CPS identified an arts instructor who did
not appear in the Creative Schools Certification data set,
Ingenuity included that teacher. Similarly, arts instructors
identified only in the Creative Schools Certification
data set, but not on file with CPS, were also included.

School/Partner Cross-Check
All school partnerships reported by community arts partners
are cross-referenced with data reported by the schools for
discrepancies. The artlook™ Partners and artlook™ Schools
data systems provide a transparent view of partnerships
to both parties—organizations can see the partnerships
reported by any given school and vice versa—and both are
encouraged to confirm that the data entered are correct.

This new approach offers two advantages. First, matching
the data sets in this way allows for more accurate schoollevel reporting. For example, there were cases of schools

Public Review

reporting an arts instructor as working full time, when in

The artlook™ Map is populated by the data entered by both

reality the teacher worked half-time for one school and

partners and schools as mentioned above. This website

half-time for another. The process described here allowed

provides another opportunity for review by schools and

Ingenuity to make adjustments to reflect these types of cases.

partners, as well as the opportunity for public scrutiny.

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