Learning Workshop

Data Informed Decision-Making: A School District’s Vision to Extract Deep and Meaningful Insights

Project77 partnered with a high-performing medium-sized school district to transform the way its administration and school leaders interact with a multitude of data sources to drive strong academic outcomes for students.

See how we work

The Problem

The district used data from several disparate sources for summative reporting, but not for proactively impacting real time decision-making to address the needs of teachers and students. Even though each data source served a specific purpose,here was not a common thread to connect the disparate systems in order to investigate fundamental questions and hypotheses.

Requirements

The district wanted a means of measuring the effectiveness of its reading intervention programs to help guide instructional decisions

The district had two major issues to address before interpreting the data

Find a systematic way to maintain and check for data integrity
Combine all the data sources into one master data solution
Since each school within the district had its own ad hoc manual spreadsheet for data input, the district had to both align data collection to the overall district strategy, as well as ensure data collection was standardized in a consistent format across schools.

What We Did

Strategize: Worked with district data team to determine objectives and key performance indicators to measure success

Normalize: Codified standard operating procedures and language around data collection, inputs, timing of collection, and reporting
Transform: Transformed and restructured database to create a master data solution, integrating first party and third-party sources
Analyze: Performed hypothesis testing and multivariable regression analysis to determine impact of various reading intervention programs on student achievement
Visualize: Created visualizations to distill information and empower district to discover insights

Benefits

Project77’s data cleansing and customized data analysis provide its partners the benefit of focusing on what matters most: making well-informed and impactful evidence-based decisions

Results

Align district goals across multiple schools with standardized data collection instrument and procedures to promote data integrity
Engage with data to drill down to the granular teacher and student contextual level to find insights and solutions
Discover previously unknown opportunities to support student academic achievement as well as identify areas of improvement
Drive significant efficiency gains by integrating first and third-party data sources into a single master data repository
Test hypotheses and assumptions using real data, allowing leadership to gauge the effectiveness of strategies and interventions

About Project77

Project77 empowers organizations with data insights and services to help drive decisions. Founded by social entrepreneurs and leaders in the education space, we bring cross-sector solutions to our partners through our expertise in using data analytics to drive best practice.

Data Aggregation, Feature Selection, and Model Selection

Project77 utilizes a variety of data techniques to glean meaningful insights from data. We specialize in statistical techniques such as linear/logistic regression, time series analysis, and unsupervised learning models (e.g. clustering, hierarchical clustering, k-means) and prescriptive analytics techniques such as Difference-in-Differences, Monte Carlo simulations, and optimization (i.e. Solver).

System Implementation and Customizations

For big data to be useful, the refined information needs to be able to bridge the gap between data silos and decision makers. Project77 works very closely with its partners to create customized reporting that end users can interpret and act upon. Additionally, we ensure that any outputs created can easily be integrated with current processes.

Intuitive Data Visualizations, Frameworks, and Reports

Project77 utilizes a variety of software packages to create visualizations that take complex findings and present them in a way that is informative and engaging. As the size and scope of data increases, the complexity of the data analysis increases as well. Project77 synthesizes the analysis and insights of data with powerful data visualization packages to produce valuable, meaningful, and actionable outputs.

Programming Languages Used: Python, SQL, R, and VBA

Project77’s knowledge of popular programming languages used in data analytics allows us to tackle data issues with unprecedented approaches towards statistical analysis, automation, and efficiency development.

Personal Data Coaching, Change Management, and Technical Support

Project77 strongly believes in a hands-on approach when cleaning, transforming, and interpreting data. We want to ensure a deeper and more insightful understanding of the data to encourage a well-informed decision-making process. Our skillsets not only allow us to process complex educational data, but also to effectively communicate information back to all relevant stakeholders.

Why We Do What We Do

The common thread that links high performing organizations is the ability to build strategic processes, measure effectiveness, learn insights, and continuously adapt to better serve stakeholders. We strive to help make education organizations agile, by identifying problem areas and barriers to student success, creating sustainable measurement frameworks based on data, and providing targeted recommendations. Our aim is to work with our partners to provide long-term solutions that dramatically impact student learning and success.

Our Team

Chris Russell

CO-FOUNDER

Enrique Parada