Gloucester High School senior Marcus Rakentine won first place and a $1,000 prize for his working prototype entry in a computer application development competition.

The goal of the App4Va contest, sponsored by the Center for Innovative Technology and the Virginia Department of Education, was to raise awareness of the Virginia Longitudinal Data System. The system provides information on the progress of students toward college and career readiness.

The competition also sought to find solutions and software tools to improve educational decisions, according to the CIT. Rakentine’s win, which included a $500 award for GHS, earned him an invitation to the VDOE Data Symposium on June 20 at the University of Virginia.

Rakentine said his application, called P2S, is for anyone who wants to see trends in the summary data for students in grades one through six. "Basically, it’s a lot of subdividing," he explained. Dan Holloway, coordinator of software development for Gloucester County Public Schools, was Rakentine’s mentor in developing the contest entry.

Holloway said P2S, an acronym for Path to Success, is an analytical tool to help school administrators view the indicators that determine if their student are on a path where they have the best chance for success. Most students follow a path toward either college readiness or workforce readiness.

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