| The purpose of this study was to determine what factors played a role in a school district's decision to use or not to use the Delaware statewide Pupil Accounting System, Pentamation. The contract for Pentamation was initially for a period of five years from July 1999 to June 2004. The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) wanted to use the information in this study to decide if they would continue the contract with Pentamation, or pursue other options. In addition, this study sought to determine if the school districts' present student information systems met state, district, building, and pupil accounting needs. Data were collected through surveys sent to all Delaware school district personnel involved with pupil accounting, and through nine focus groups that represented state agencies and school districts with various involvements with Pentamation. The findings showed that most present and past users of Pentamation found the software to be not user-friendly, difficult to use, hard to train and retrain users, and too complicated for their everyday needs. However, a majority of the users suggested that Pentamation met their data and pupil accounting needs most of the time. Some of the major recommendations to the DDOE included continuing the contract with Pentamation when it expired in June 2004, working with the vendor to make Pentamation more user-friendly, hiring additional personnel to support the system at the DDOE, as well as in the school districts, and implementing and evaluating Pentamation's new Web based product. |
