Inzata Analytics

The second edition of our weekly newsletter "The K-12 Playbook" is now live. This week we do a deep dive into nationwide school closures and how this will impact the K-12 landscape for all supporting agencies. Subscribe to stay up-to-date on the latest in K-12 funding news!

We just published the first issue of The K-12 Playbook. This one covers where ESA funding actually comes from across 7 states, what the ESSER cliff and enrollment declines are doing to district budgets, and why the shift toward fee-for-service is accelerating faster than most people realize. Ohio returns $8.83 for every $1 of state ESC funding. Iowa lost 200 AEA employees in a single year after guaranteed funding was eliminated. Same system, very different bets. If you work in or with K-12 districts or regional education agencies, this is written for you.

Most school districts don't have a data quality problem. They have a timing problem. The data is there. Attendance lives in the SIS. Scores come back from the screener. Behavior referrals get logged after every incident. None of that is missing. The problem is when someone actually sees it. A student who missed 12 days by October and dropped two reading levels on the fall screener is a student you can still reach. That same data sitting in a quarterly report that lands on a principal's desk in January is just a record of what already went wrong. Student data has a shelf life. An early warning signal in September is an intervention opportunity. That same signal in February is a statistic. Most districts are running their data cycles on a quarterly or semester cadence because that's how the reports get built. Someone pulls the export, cleans it in Excel, formats it for the leadership team, and by the time it's presented, the window to act on it has already closed. The districts that are actually moving the needle on graduation rates and chronic absenteeism aren't collecting better data. They're seeing the same data faster. The difference between reactive and proactive isn't a new assessment or a new curriculum. It's whether the signal reaches the right person while there's still time to do something about it. Curious how other district leaders and ESA directors think about this. When does data actually reach the people who need to act on it in your region? #K12Education #StudentSuccess #EducationLeadership #SchoolData #EdTech

Where would you place your district on the data readiness journey? Before districts can fully leverage dashboards and analytics, there is an important first step: data readiness. Many school systems have vast amounts of data, but it often resides across multiple platforms, departments, and reporting systems. Data readiness is about ensuring your district’s data ecosystem is ready to support meaningful insights. This includes: - Identifying key data sources - Ensuring interoperability between systems - Aligning metrics with district priorities - Establishing consistent processes for data use When districts begin focusing on data readiness, they move from simply collecting information to actively using it to guide improvement efforts. ConnectEd Solutions partners with districts to help build this foundation so that data becomes a tool that supports leaders, educators, and, ultimately, students. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eAYPJ_Ss

Most people don't realize this. A K-12 district with 25,000 students manages 150–200 distinct data systems. A Fortune 800–1000 company with $3B in revenue manages about the same number. The difference? The Fortune 1000 company spends $5,000–$15,000 per employee on IT infrastructure. Has a dedicated data engineering team. Has integrated analytics built into how they operate. The district spends roughly $100 per student. Has 1–2 IT generalists. And is expected to produce the same data-driven outcomes. Same complexity. Worlds apart in resources. This isn't a technology problem. It's a structural one, and it's showing up every time a principal asks "which students are falling behind?" and someone has to pull three reports by hand to answer. If you work in K-12 leadership, tag a superintendent or director who needs to see this.

ESAs exist to serve districts in ways they couldn't accomplish alone. One of the most common gaps: districts need data analytics and early warning systems, but most don't have the infrastructure to build or maintain them. They end up going without, or piecing together tools that don't connect. A peer ESA solved this for their member districts by white-labeling an analytics platform under their own name and offering it as a shared service. Member districts get a dropout-prevention and early warning dashboard connected to the data they already collect. The ESA handles the relationship and the rollout. We handle everything on the back end. Districts get access to a service they couldn't build on their own. The ESA generates a sustainable revenue line that funds the work. No technology build required. If you want to understand the economics and see what this looks like for an ESA your size, the pricing model is here: https://lnkd.in/es3bw3Kk

A student with declining grades, rising absences, and zero LMS engagement is showing three warning signs at once. In most districts, no one sees all three together because each one lives in a different system. That student is already in your data. They are just not being flagged. We put together a free guide for district leaders and ESA teams that shows what K-12 data looks like when your SIS, assessment platforms, and LMS are finally connected into one view. Think PowerSchool or Skyward feeding into the same model as NWEA MAP or Renaissance Star, alongside Canvas or Google Classroom, all surfacing a single picture of every student. The guide covers early warning indicators, chronic absenteeism dashboards, MTSS tracking, and the financial case for connected analytics, including how one ESA region protected $7M in state funding in year one. If your ESA is not yet offering this for member districts, the last page of the guide explains how to get that started. Link to our referral page is in the comments, as well as some additional information.