Legislators have been working since 2012 to improve literacy outcomes in the state, notably when the state legislature passed the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, which required that third-graders pass a reading test in order to be promoted to fourth grade.

Committed to addressing this issue ongoing, educators and administrators in Ohio have implemented and are focusing on a number of strategies to improve third-grade literacy rates and numeracy.

By implementing these strategies, schools are working to ensure that all students have the skills they need to succeed in school and in life. But one area in particular that sticks out to me is this notion of “data-driven instruction.”

Data-Driven Instruction Relies on Sound Data Practices

School reform from SB-1 and SB-96 have made financial forecasting and scenario planning for schools in New Mexico more important than ever. Regrettably, New Mexico recently ranked 51 out of 50 states and Washington D.C., but the state is “doubling down” to reverse course and improve achievement outcomes.

Meanwhile, lawmakers, the executive branch, the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED), and statewide educators and administrators are working to collaborate on a critical initiative referred to as “Moving the Needle.” This follows a much publicized lawsuit — the Martinez/Yazzie Consolidated Lawsuit — following which the PED acknowledged “the Court’s ruling that ‘no education system can be sufficient for the education of all children unless it is founded on the sound principle that every child can learn and succeed[.]’”

According to one recent news article:

Along with a proposed $4.3 billion support package from the state Public Education Department, lawmakers are mulling several pieces of legislation for the session, including revamping graduation requirements and increasing the amount of time students spend in school.

Those proposals, lawmakers and education officials have said, aim to improve student outcomes and close gaps for “at-risk” students, tackle statewide educator vacancies and better support schools and their leaders.

If New Mexico is going to be successful at “moving the needle,” it will be critical to measure all of the contributing factors that can impact student achievement — financial and educational alike.

Failing Grades for the Nation’s Report Card?

Educators and school administrators nationwide are still reacting and responding to the release of the “Nation’s Report Card,” issued by the ​​National Assessment of Educational Progress in late 2022. What came to few observers’ surprise was that achievement scores for both mathematics and reading declined significantly during and following the pandemic. Educators are now working hard to reverse those trends and get student outcomes back to pre-pandemic levels.

The good news is that there are concerted efforts like New Mexico’s Move the Needle initiative to counter the learning losses by teachers, administrators, superintendents, assessment professionals and curriculum directors alike. There truly is a “we’re all in this together” spirit that’s noticeable and admirable.

This unified front faces significant obstacles that have also emerged in this same timeframe: a national teacher shortage crisis and an overwhelming amount of work, compliance obligations, reporting duties, and even an avalanche of data to sift through.

Districts are now beginning to discover that less truly can be more — that simplifying and consolidating resources and technology can actually reveal clearer pathways to better educational outcomes, without adding more to our overworked partners in student performance.

What Has Been Done to Address Third-Grade Literacy and Numeracy Rates in New Mexico?

Two of the most often cited metrics for educational progress are third-grade literacy rates and third-grade numeracy (mathematics) rates. Seen as key indicators of future graduation and dropout rates, these proficiency scores are key prognosticators of even distant outcomes, such as incarceration rates and a community’s economic health. When New Mexico officials speak of “moving the needle,” these are two of the most monitored statistics they will consider as success or failure.

Committed to addressing this issue ongoing, educators and administrators in New Mexico have implemented and are focusing on a number of strategies to improve third-grade literacy rates and numeracy, including:

• Early intervention: Schools are providing early intervention services to students who are struggling with reading and math. These services may include tutoring, small group instruction, or one-on-one support. Munetrix has made early intervention one of our top priorities as a company.
  
• Data-driven instruction: Schools are using data to identify students who are struggling and to target their instruction accordingly. This data may come from state tests, progress monitoring assessments, or teacher observations.
  
• Differentiated instruction: Schools are working to provide differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all learners. This means that teachers are tailoring their instruction to the individual needs of each student.
  
• Family engagement: Schools are working to engage families in their children’s education. This may include providing parent workshops, sending home newsletters, or holding parent-teacher conferences.
  
• Creating a culture of literacy and numeracy in schools. Many public schools in Ohio are making sure that reading and math are valued and that students are given opportunities to practice these skills throughout the day.

By implementing these strategies, schools are working to ensure that all students have the skills they need to succeed in school and in life. But one area in particular that sticks out to me is this notion of “data-driven instruction.”

What is Data-Driven Instruction, and How Can it “Move the Needle?”

In short, data-driven instruction involves gathering together a database of information about the students in each classroom, and using that information to improve the quality of teaching in the classroom. The good news is that access to data has exploded in recent years; the bad news is that, while educators are now data-rich, many struggle with being knowledge-poor.

Too often, all of the data educators need to optimize education outcomes live in disparate silos, making it nearly impossible to access, analyze and leverage for the betterment of students. However, when combined, integrated and overlaid, what often results is that invisible becomes…visible.

We frequently use the term “braiding data,” which is an apt representation of the benefit of such an approach. Individual strings of rope in the physical realm are made much more stronger when braided together than are when used separately and alone. Your data is no different. When intertwined, integrated and interdependent, your various systems become much more than a stack — they become a powerful, complete and cohesive system that honors and accounts for all drivers and outcomes of a school’s or district’s ultimate success.

The stronger the rope, the better it will be to pull students forward and move the needle for an entire state.

Contact us to see how your school building or district can harness the power of data to improve literacy, numeracy and other educational outcomes.

Getting More Done in Less Time with Fewer Tools

Noted political scientist Herbert A. Simon once observed:

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. 

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. 

Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Superintendents and other school administrators can no doubt relate. Over the last decade or more, we have gained greater access to information, have an ever-growing stack of tools and information at our disposal and yet we find ourselves so overwhelmed and overworked that we can scarcely make sense of it all…let alone leverage the insights that lurk beneath the surface, hidden from plain sight.

Each passing year or so, without really thinking about it, professionals in every sector (the public and educational included) have incrementally added a tool here, an application there, a system here, a database there. We are now at the point at which enough has become more than enough — it’s become too much.

Now the challenge has become finding ways to do more with less. The forward-thinking among our busiest superintendents are now discovering ways to combine tools, simplify the tech stack, and eliminate multiple — even redundant — tools by combining once disparate systems into more holistic, singular systems that complement each other and work in unison to achieve optimal educational outcomes.

Combine and Contract to Get More Out of Your Technology

As a school district superintendent, you are responsible for the technology that supports much more than only the learning of your students and performance of your staff. The sheer amount of technologies a given administrator must log into and assess at any given time is enormous. Student achievement reporting, learning management systems, budgeting and forecasting software, educator evaluation systems, transparency and compliance reporting, personnel management, project coordination software, school safety drill management systems, time and resource tracking, truancy and attendance, behavior and discipline. I might go on and on and still never even cover them all. This can be a daunting task, as the tech stack for a school district can be complex and ever-changing.

There are many reasons why you might want to simplify your tech stack, and only one among them is to save the obvious time and administrative burden of managing, maintaining and accessing this number of disparate technology tools. Perhaps you are also looking to save money facing budget cuts, or perhaps you want to make it easier for your staff to use the technology in a way that is more clearly and closely tied to measurements of outcomes. Maybe you are looking to improve security or compliance.

Whatever your reasons, there are a few things you can do to simplify your tech stack.

1. First, take an inventory of all the technology that you currently use. This will help you to identify any areas where you could consolidate or eliminate systems.

2. Second, consider your needs. What are the essential technologies that you need to support the learning of your students and staff? Once you have identified your needs, you can start to eliminate any unnecessary systems.

3. Third, look for ways to consolidate systems. For example, you might be able to move all of your student data into a single cloud-based system — including both publicly available peer data as well as your own internal proprietary data. This will make it easier for your staff to access, analyze and leverage the data.

4. Fourth, consider using a single platform for all of your technology needs. This can make it easier for your staff to learn and use the technology, especially during times of high staff turnover.

5. Fifth, work with your vendors to simplify your tech stack. Many vendors offer discounts or other incentives for schools that commit to using their products for a certain period of time or the more available options/modules the user elects to activate. Purchasing more from a single vendor may actually reduce cost through the elimination of others.

By following these tips, you can simplify your tech stack and make it easier for your staff to use the technology to support the learning of your students. You will no doubt reduce the burdens of time and employee training, where monetary savings become obvious. In return, both you and your team will have more time and greater bandwidth to focus on what is most critical: elevating educational outcomes.

But that’s only the beginning of the benefit. The true upside is perhaps far less obvious.

The Hidden Benefits of Making the Invisible Visible

One of the most powerful cases for merging technology, simplifying the superintendent’s tech stack, and eliminating costly redundancies is the upshot of what this truly accomplishes. What results is more comprehensive systems that keep all of the important information and data in one location, so that the drivers of success can talk to each other, learn from each other, and be analyzed holistically.

When systems are in silos, your various data systems are keeping secrets from you — and each other. When combined, integrated and overlaid, what often results is that invisible becomes…visible.

We use the term “braiding data,” which is an apt representation of the benefit of such an approach. Individual strings of rope in the physical realm are made much more stronger when braided together than are when used separately and alone. Your data is no different. When intertwined, integrated and interdependent, your various systems become much more than a stack — they become a powerful, complete and cohesive system that honors and accounts for all drivers and outcomes of a school’s or district’s ultimate success.

The Munetrix Enterprise Edition for Schools is an example of just such braided technology that superintendents have at their disposal. The system is a comprehensive, all-in-one solution for school districts looking to create a district-wide culture of community through trust, teamwork and transparency. From financials and transparency compliance to planning and progress reporting, the Munetrix Financial Module features easy-to-adopt and easy-to-use modules that facilitate simpler and more robust forecasting, capital planning and performance management. 

Offered in conjunction with the Munetrix Academic Module, the product offers a comprehensive suite of powerful, interdependent solutions for the whole district, as well as the whole student—taking multi-level, complex data sets and making them simple to understand, report and act upon. The Academic Module provides a full suite of tools single tool that gives superintendents and educators the ability to accelerate academic outcomes and effectively educate and monitor the progress of “the whole student”—academically, emotionally, socially, demographically, and socio-economically—all with a single, easy-to-use interface.

Specific modules address the complete range of a district’s departmental operations, including tools for performance analytics, data visualization, business and process workflows, fiscal wellness, and compliance reporting. Maximizing the product’s interoperability by integrating with a district’s existing systems, the product enables users to quickly and easily harvest and contextualize publicly available data and privately generated data in one powerful combination. 

Users at any level of financial proficiency can use the system to create linear regression budgets in a matter of minutes, as well as multi-year forecasts with multiple scenarios, to assess potential outlooks and plan for the future. Human resources teams can generate multiple reports to better understand performance, staffing trends and costs related to salary and benefits. The system also empowers administrators to compare enrollment trends against staffing trends to easily visualize operational and budgetary status/forecasts. 

Easy-to-use interpretive charts and graphs help policy makers understand the true picture and help auditors in the preparation of “supplemental” reports. 

Best of all, users are able to quickly transform multi-level complex data sets into easy-to-comprehend visualizations in order to provide consistent, relevant and actionable data to stakeholders—leading to greater transparency and collaboration across the district and entire community it serves.

The product saves superintendents hundreds of hours per year, otherwise spent on collecting, aggregating, disaggregating and analyzing data by more traditional methods such as spreadsheets, Google forms, Word documents, etc., stored in multiple, disparate locations, where they are difficult to sort, search and cross-analyze. 

The Munetrix Enterprise Edition for Schools provides schools a unique, holistic platform that empowers districts to analyze all of their data with a single log-in and destination, supporting horizontal succession planning, building institutional knowledge, and facilitating workflow management. 

More transparency. More teamwork and collaboration. Less with more…that is what the modern tech stack looks like for superintendents.Want help simplifying your superintendent tech stack? Contact us for a custom demo of the Munetrix Enterprise Edition for Schools.