Harvey Smith
Director
Interactive Illinois Report Card
815-753-9680
hsmith@niu.edu
Harvey Smith is Director for the Interactive Illinois Report Card (IIRC). The IIRC is a web-based report card for all of Illinois’ 4000 schools, created at NIU and funded by the Illinois State Board of Education. Located at http://iirc.niu.edu, the IIRC averages about 8000 visitors per week. Dr. Smith has developed school report card data files and reports for Illinois schools since 1993. Quickly adopting more efficient technologies, he produced the IIRC searchable school data archive on CD-Rom for public release in 1999-2000 and initiated the IIRC website in 2001. The quality and popularity of the IIRC attracted state funding from ISBE starting in 2003. Due to high demand from local school districts for customized IIRC services, Dr. Smith now supervises an IIRC staff of nearly 20 programmers, designers, statisticians, and others who turn report card numbers into the IIRC’s colorful and easy-to-understand graphics.
Criss-crossing the state from Zion to Belleville and Galena to Golconda, Dr. Smith presents at dozens of educational conferences, policy forums, and training workshops each year. In addition to working directly with many Illinois school districts on use of school improvement and assessment data, he has conducted training sessions around the state for hundreds of IIRC trainers as part of the IIRC partnership with the Illinois Principals Association. A member of the State Superintendent’s Assessment and Accountability Task Force in 2002-4, Dr. Smith now serves on the State Testing Review Committee and the High School Challenge Task Force.
Dr. Smith is an associate professor of history, teaches French history, and serves as assistant chairman of the NIU History Department in addition to his work on the IIRC. He previously directed NIU’s prestigious Social Sciences Research Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.