Quicker Insights: Volusia Co. Schools Transforms Data into Action with Connected Intelligence

Every morning at Florida’s Volusia County Schools, a pair of data analysts spent 45 minutes to a full hour performing inefficient data loading processes. The district used a cumbersome secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) to transfer files with its previous assessment vendor.

That slow, manual process not only wasted valuable analyst time, but it also limited the ability of school and district staff to access critical data insights.

To reduce wasted time and improve data access, 63,000-student Volusia County Schools implemented PowerSchool Connected Intelligence K-12 to consolidate data and PowerSchool Performance Matters for assessments. Connected Intelligence K-12 is the first fully managed Data as a Service platform purpose-built for K-12 education that allows you to securely consolidate data from all PowerSchool and non-PowerSchool data sources—including all structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.

With Connected Intelligence K-12, the time-consuming SFTP process taking as much as five hours per week is now completely automated. PowerBI dashboards are updated every hour from 7 a.m. – 4 p.m.

“This allows for our schools to receive the most up-to-date information in real-time,” says Dr. Angel R. Teron, Coordinator of Research, Evaluation, and Accountability at Volusia County Schools.

“Connected Intelligence K-12 has increased the efficiency of the work completed and allowed for our data analysts to continue to innovate since they no longer have to spend countless hours migrating and formatting data.”

And PowerSchool isn’t just saving the district time. It’s giving staff access to powerful data insights by bringing all relevant data together in one secure data lake. Dr. Teron says data analysts are now using their morning time to innovate and create systems for educators to monitor student performance.

“Connected Intelligence K-12 has enhanced our ability to transform data into actionable information that schools, administrators, and teachers can use to inform instruction. Connected Intelligence K-12 allows our data analysts to migrate data from Performance Matters to our Microsoft PowerBI dashboards seamlessly,” says Dr. Teron.

With the combination of Connected Intelligence K-12 and Performance Matters, Volusia staff can make instant queries of Performance Matters data, saving data analysts “countless hours of work,” according to Dr. Teron.

Connected Intelligence K-12 by PowerSchool allows districts to consolidate and manage their data in a single location, giving unparalleled access to all current and previous years of data, including from disparate data sources. The key is PowerSchool’s prebuilt data ingestion pipelines, which provide the foundation for efficient, reliable, and scalable data.

“PowerSchool Connected Intelligence K-12 has been nothing but transformative and enhanced our ability to support schools by helping us automate processes to provide schools with actionable information to inform instructional planning and support,” says Dr. Teron.

Within Connected Intelligence K-12, data is the foundation to drive systemic change, student success, and economic mobility. Leveraging the unparalleled K-12 education technology expertise from PowerSchool and the industry-leading infrastructure backend of strategic partners—Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the revolutionary data cloud company Snowflake—this platform is uniquely positioned to power the holistic student journey with a modernized, sustainable approach.