Powerful technology in itself does not guarantee solutions to our challenges. For technology to provide benefits, it must be put in the right context and must provide serious efficiencies within that context. It should also be easy to use so it can be readily adopted.
The engine at the heart of K12 Insight’s solution was developed in response to the needs of corporate America. This ensures technical rigor and efficiency that are the hallmark of solutions developed for serious business applications. With that as the seed, K12 Insight has customized a solution for school districts over the last four years in working closely with a large number of district clients. Our solution is a result of such close collaboration with the users in districts. The key advantages of this solution include:
Information that’s reliable – A critical flaw in efforts to build a culture of data-driven decisions is a lack of confidence in the integrity of the underlying data. K12 Insight’s solution addresses this issue most directly to ensure that you have utmost confidence in the information that becomes the basis of your decisions. The process to submit survey responses must be easy for survey respondents, specifically addressing those factors that lead to poor response rates. For instance, anonymity of respondent is a critical requirement if you expect your teachers and staff to offer you candid feedback. Numerous such factors were taken into account in developing our solution for deployment in K12 systems.
Savings of funds and time by simplifying analysis – should be easy to run and flexible without compromising the depth of analytical capabilities. K12 Insight’s solution has Business Intelligence type reports which can be accessed by simply pointing and clicking. The results offer powerful insight instantly highlighting areas of interest to administrators. The protracted and costly “report generation phase” in survey projects is eliminated resulting in cost and time savings. All the information is available to everyone who needs it – quite literally at their fingertips.
Emergence of a new data-centered culture through collaboration – An enterprise solution is designed with the understanding that the solution could potentially impact many people across multiple departments. If all stakeholders have a window to their information with proper permission levels, you see the emergence of a new data-centered culture based on collaboration around common facts and information. A common platform encourages greater use district-wide. Our solution pays for itself often on the very first project in the district. Yet, that first project is merely the beginning of a new culture of efficiency.
Unique Insight – What is the impact of “soft factors” such as student perception of safety or ability of student to eat breakfast the morning of the test on test results? Intuitively you expect a correlation, yet common wisdom is resigned from ever being able to quantify such correlations. K12 Insight’s solution will let you measure, benchmark and eventually compare with peer data all such factors.
No Digital Divide – Despite the advantages of online solutions, as district leaders you cannot ignore the fact that you do not have an email address for every family with a child in the district. Internet access may still be beyond the reach of some families. Purely-internet based solutions will exclude the digital have-nots of your district. K12 Insight’s solution allows survey responses to come in through any channel – backpack, direct mail, fax or online. All survey responses are entered into a central data repository from where information can be easily analyzed and shared.
Survey Bank for School Districts – Reliable survey instruments on all topics relevant to school districts are available as part of K12 Insight’s solution. These surveys have been developed by experts and validated in the K12 context. You can further customize it to your district’s exact needs and deploy them rapidly and confidently.
