Brenda Roof

Brenda Roof is the District Information Officer at Webster Central School District, where she is responsible for all state, federal and local reporting of data for the district. Her department creates surveys, assessments and other measurement tools. She oversees the scanning and analysis of these surveys and assessments, and the imports and exports of all data in their instructional and student software systems. Brenda currently uses Remark Office OMR to collect perceptual data and summative data from their teachers regarding students who are transitioning from elementary school to middle school and middle school to high school. The teachers meet with the middle school counselors, and the middle school counselors also meet with the high school counselors and fill out a number of agreed upon questions centering on habits of mind, learning styles and program placement. The sheets are then scanned and the data is passed along to the middle school and high school administration and teachers to help make placement and group setting decisions. It is also combined with state assessment information and diagnostic information on their students.

When Brenda first started using Remark Office OMR, it was at Willink Middle School. Since then, they have expanded use to all 11 buildings in the district. Brenda’s largest project came in the first year they used Remark. They created answer sheets for their students who were taking the New York Regents Exams in all subject areas and were able to collect, analyze and inform their instruction in a timely manner for the first time ever. The state at that time typically took months if not years before they were able to see the student results. They are also using Remark Office OMR this year to collect data from their staff, students, parents and community, which Brenda thinks will be their biggest endeavor thus far. Brenda says, “we process so many different things with Remark it is hard to say anything is bigger, better or more important because everything we do is just that, especially to the end users and the students. Because it is helping to immediately inform instruction.”

What is important to Brenda is, “the data analysis, it is just so powerful.” She goes on to say, “Once you have it set up, you can use it over and over again and we do, so that is also a nice feature. We have hundreds of surveys and assessments that we just use year after year!” Brenda has provided a great deal of input into the reporting features of Remark Quick Stats over the years to help us create the best software possible, including directly influencing the new “scaled scoring” feature in Remark Office OMR 8. We thank Brenda for her input and willingness to test drive new features to ensure they meet our customers’ needs.