Sarasota County Schools: District Data Interactive Dashboards

As part of the partnership between the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and Sarasota County Schools, The Patterson Foundation is funding the position for a database engineer coordinator with Sarasota County Schools.  This position is designed to strengthen the data acquisition and management processes needed to ensure that continuous progress is being made in areas that are supported by the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.  One of the duties of this position is to produce district dashboards.  This has revolutionized the way we access, analyze, and report information about our schools and students.

In the first year of our partnership, Sarasota County Schools produced four interactive dashboards where school staff and the larger community could access data.  These dashboards are readily available on our district websites. This information is searchable and permits advanced analytics at the aggregate level.  These dashboards have enabled Sarasota County Schools to identify patterns and trends that were not as transparent or efficiently accessed prior to their existence. This information has permitted Sarasota County Schools to modify instruction and programming to better meet the needs of each student.

*Click on the images below to launch the links

As we became more knowledgeable about the process, our team began to develop educator dashboards.  Here teachers and administrators were able to drill down to classroom data and look at the performance by class and period.  We were even able to look at individual performance.

This opened a world of possibility and created impact at the classroom level:

• Small group instruction
• Scheduling
• Lesson planning
• Curriculum sequence
• Attendance and discipline guidelines
• Collaborative discussions
• Parent and student feedback
• And more

So what is next?

The Teacher’s Data Dash — an interactive teacher driven dashboard to access multiple panels with their students’ academic and behavioral information from the past, and where they are currently.

• How has my current class performed in past years?
• How did my students who I had two years ago perform last spring?
• What are my past and current students’ attendance rates?
• How did my second and fourth-period class do on i-Ready two years ago?
• How are my ESE students doing on the benchmark assessments?

This dashboard will provide teachers with a longitudinal view of their students’ performance—current and past.

We are also developing trainings and mini data dashes or 30-second videos for on-demand training.

As we move forward and imagine the possibilities, we will begin exploring the student level. Students will take individual ownership, practice goal setting, reflection, and visible learning at its best.