SWOT Analysis

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats for Accelerated Instruction Plans (AIP)

Strengths
Product AIP is mandated by State and Federal law if a student fails the annual state exam (approx. a third of all Texas students who take the exam fail it on the first attempt) Current statewide remedial success rate is 1/12 of all test failers Product exclusivity competitors cannot easily reproduce our AIP data. District/schools receive from the test vendor a list of the skills each student failed. No statistical analysis occurs to identify a students starting level for skill remediation. Without analysis of each answer choice, remediation is a one size fits all approach. Unique product - predictive analysis (analysis of error responses) identifies: basal starting point for each students weak skill(s), the optimal sequence for targeting multiple skills if a student fails several test objectives, strategies for how to group students for remediation, and the teachers skill/experience needed to help students in each of the different types of remedial groups. Prediction analysis can utilize up to 647 variables per student for product control Product exceeds federal and state governmental AIP regulations. Districts audited by TEA, easily can verify compliance with State AIP rule by providing auditors the printed AIPs We employ only credentialed personnel for the statistical and curriculum strategies in the software all have doctorate degrees (language arts, mathematics, sociology, special education)

Over a 100 years of combined experience in school research and hands-on education of students All personnel are familiar with several statistical software products (SPSS, SAS, and SQL) that apply advanced algorithms when mining state data

Data mining reveals the patterns in students answer choices and the overall test trends within a districts or schools data Decision tree choices in the software derived from extensive knowledge of mathematics and/or language arts curriculum for kindergarten through high school (K-12), plus the math transition skills needed for community or four year college level courses.

AIPs in the sciences and history areas - we have a network of credentialed people with curriculum experience when ready to add new subject areas (only AIPS for math and reading initially)

15 years of merged state data (over 900 million files) for mining Have PEIMS (Public Education Information Management System) data collected by TEA for student: demographics, test scores, each test response selected, all the schools a student attended; plus district demographics, test scores for each district school

Have Teacher data: colleges attended, year credentials earned, schools employed by, courses taught at those schools; in sum, all teacher demographics at all schools in Texas since 2006

Ten million dollars current value for the combined databases Four billion dollars U.S. expansion potential in the 8 to 15 states already identified with data indicators similar to Texas for test, schools, students, and teachers (ex. Florida).

Ten billion dollars International marketing expansion potential to countries outside of U.S. (ex. Norway and Finland).

Weaknesses
Start-up costs for software development and security measures Limited human resources and staff members at this time

Potential AIP software compatibility issues with some districts operating systems Marketing AIP product (brand it) such that customers recognize the uniqueness of it, value to them, and why competitors claims of being able to offer a similar product are invalid

Opportunities
Software licensing, annual update fees, plus servicing districts with AIP software patches after they update operating systems to comply with the new data system TEA is developing A market that recognizes the need for new remediation methods and the need to comply with State/Federal AIP regulations. Failure by States/districts to achieve annual percentage targets for the increases in students passing the state exam, triggers punitive funding measures, costly monitoring, and extensive changes. Undesired punishment for failure, provides the incentive to purchase this product.

Threats New inferior substitute products emerging with lower prices Competition from bigger corporations (ex. Pearson Corporation) Economic pressure on districts until states restore their funding Temptation to allow a buyout of AIP Corporation before full realization of future value for expanded services and marketing. Conclusion As Big Data becomes more pervasive in the education world, district leaders will need to take a look at why analytics have been put to such good use in certain areas of business and education strategy. Its a combination of software and sweat that gets the job done. Now looking for major source of seed money for application/s development/s. E-mail to uhresearch@ msn.com for more details.