Data Analytics and Visualizations for Smaller K-12 Teams

When you have smaller teams, each individual educator and administrator often wears many hats, and resources are spread thin to meet many needs. And in a school or district with limited staff—or charter, private, or international school—you may not have the time or resources to gain data insights through data warehousing, K-12 analytics, or data visualizations, which include processing data into an easily sharable visual format.

We often have excess school and student information living in multiple locations within siloed edtech products. The greatest challenge isn’t that we don’t have usable information. Instead, it’s that it can take too much time to pull data together to find what you’re looking for.

“Traditionally, complex analytics systems have been reserved for groups with a lot of staff and resources where they can hand someone over to a massive data integration project. But we know that the majority of school districts aren’t working with extra hands on deck. We’re all already wearing multiple hats, and the challenge of taking on a data integration project on our own is really difficult,” says Dr. Courtney Stevens, a former K-12 director of accountability, innovation, and education technology and current Vice President of Product Management at PowerSchool.

PowerSchool Student Analytics—by pulling your disparate data together to give a complete picture of your schools, classrooms, and students—levels the playing field for educational institutions of all types and sizes. Student Analytics plugs right into PowerSchool SIS, giving anyone the benefit of advanced data analytics to take action, make informed decisions, and impact student success.

“The power of bringing all that information from all these different places into one spot means that we can be actionable very quickly with the stories that our students are telling us with the data. With Student Analytics, we’re excited to take so much of that work off the hands of smaller schools and districts and put the power of having a true data integration tool at your fingertips—without all the resources or time needed to get you up and running,” says Dr. Stevens.

At Insight School of Oklahoma, an alternative education online school, many students work part- or full-time jobs, have significant family responsibilities, or are even young parents—all factors contributing to attendance and truancy issues and only 30% on-time graduation rate.

“We hope that with Student Analytics, we can look at the data, see reports, start tracking data, and have conversations about the data. We have a dropout truancy specialist responsible for getting kids back in class. She’ll be looking at that data to see where students are failing and where we need to increase communication, have conversations with parents, or contact the authorities,” says Elizabeth Britt, Insight School of Oklahoma’s High School Principal.

So far, the school system has seen a 27% increase in its graduation rate through the use of Student Analytics in combination with attendance intervention tools.

Holistic analytics provides educators the data needed to connect the dots and enhance student success. Schools and districts can see how to best position their organizations to address critical initiatives around learning loss, fully understand the adoption of digital learning, and ensure graduation readiness.

“Student Analytics brings together all that essential data we use in education every day—in one place for easy access,” says Tracy McCown, PowerSchool Director of Solution Engineering, Data and Analytics. “It brings together attendance, behavior, enrollment, course outcomes, assessments, as well as pulling in digital learning usage data to see how staff and students are interacting with these different platforms.”

Other examples include looking at key performance indicators that schools must measure daily. Advanced data analytics can help smaller teams look at one or more departments. They can also see how all students in a specific grade perform in a single subject. Educators can understand where they’re doing well and where to focus improvement efforts.

“We’re taking this broad data from PowerSchool SIS and bringing it to life in Student Analytics data dashboards so you can get great insights into what’s going on in your system and take targeted action. You can get a whole-child picture to take the best action for that student. You can also identify subgroups and then look at why things are happening to take action,” says McCown. “One thing we don’t want to do is wait until it’s too late to take action. We want to be able to diagnose early and get students back on track.”

PowerSchool Student Analytics is the ultimate unifying engine for the entire PowerSchool ecosystem. Benefits for smaller teams include saving massive amounts of time, lowering the cost and effort to pull data together and gain advanced analytics, and using automated dashboards for a smooth, unified experience.

“I like to work with data, follow it, and look at trends,” says Michael George, Chief Operations and Information Officer at Virginia’s Fredericksburg City Schools. “Before Student Analytics, we were so wrapped up in providing what others asked for and not looking deeper than that. I don’t think I would’ve ever seen these trends that we’re seeing on my own. Even when our superintendent just wants quick demographic information, I can get it quickly. Pulling it right off the homepage takes just a few minutes and saves me hours every month.”