huanix

I’ve decided to begin writing a book called “On Becoming a Scheduler” that describes the process of scheduling for middle and high school students in a way that combines the scheduling needs of the school with unique characteristics of students. It turns out many schools use a completely random assignment for scheduling, and others focus only on course requests without consideration to the actual students placed in each class.

I had a great idea today, it works like this..

1. create a database with fields representing major data regarding student performance in school: discipline points, referrals to guidance, absenteeism, state test performance, end-of-year grades by subject (That represents 12 fields or 12 factors in my situation, it may vary for yours)
2. The hard part - fill the database with the data.. in my school of 1000 students, that represents 12000 unique pieces of data in lots of different places.
3. Do a factor analysis on the 12 factors to determine the weight of each.
4. Calculate a Z-score for each of the factors and multiply it by the weight of that factor.
5. Sum the weighted z-scores for that student’s scheduling rank #.
6. Place the students in order of rank, and do a “number off” to place them in a class or team.

Thanks to Barrie Woods for suggesting the z-score sum idea!

I wish I had some way to demonstrate that on the blog - i may create a sample table to show it … the idea is awesome in my head!