Effectively presenting student data and analytics is a vital process that plays a significant role in school improvement, impacting everything from funding to student success. We understand that this journey can sometimes feel overwhelming, as administrators are tasked with sharing student progress, securing funding, and making informed decisions while communicating with various stakeholders on top of everything. However, challenges like data overload and actionable insights can hinder this process. You need to translate the data for your audience.

Here are four tips for transforming student data into productive and successful meetings while cultivating a data-driven culture that enhances student outcomes.

1. Don't overload them with data.

Schools gather large amounts of data from various sources, such as grades, attendance, assessments, and behavior. However, they often have little time to analyze it. Sorting through this data and making it comprehensible can be overwhelming.

With Standard Education, you can easily extract trends from our real-time dashboards and present them in a clearer, more digestible format. Focus on one or two trends per meeting and define what success looks like for each by the end of the session. Do you want to implement a change based on these trends, or are you simply aiming to raise awareness?

2. Design your presentation to fit the audience.

Understanding the specific goals of your audience, such as a school board or a group of teachers, is crucial in tailoring your presentation. This understanding will guide you in determining the amount of context to include, making your presentation easy to understand. For instance, a school board presentation may require additional context on the recent challenges that may have impacted grading trends. However, they may not need a detailed account of daily operations, but rather a high-level overview of the school. While in a teachers' meeting, they have a lot of the day-to-day context and can go right to thinking through those data trends observed.

• Focus on the "big picture" impact on the district.
• Be direct and establish your point quickly.
• Emphasize long-term goals and how data supports strategic planning.
  • This is where data around newly implemented early intervention practices with grading or attendance may come in, for example.
• Focus on the impact on student outcomes and progress as seen in your student data analysis.
• Use relatable examples and real-life scenarios to illustrate data points.
• Use clear, concise language and avoid jargon to ensure that your audience is well-informed and not overwhelmed by unnecessary details.

3. Start with the 'Why.'

As a presenter, it’s essential to enter a meeting with a clear goal. Whether your aim is to inform others or to seek funding, understanding the purpose of the meeting will help you, as a school administrator, effectively communicate the reasons behind the student data you are presenting.

At the beginning, offer your thesis statement—the purpose of the data presentation and how it aligns with the school's overall mission and goals. This sets the stage for the data you're presenting.  

An administrator could explain that they are analyzing student attendance data to pinpoint areas where students are facing challenges and to create targeted interventions aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism. A reduction of 37% in chronic abseteeism over three months following these interventions will have a greater impact when considering the challenges and the improvement in grades for those who increased their attendance.

By clearly linking the data analysis to the school's vision and goals, administrators can illustrate the significance of data-driven decision-making, track progress, and foster greater support among their audience, including teachers, parents, and the school board. Standard Education can help extract the data needed from your real-time dashboards and successfully showcase your "why" through data.

4. Use visuals with clear goals

Zooming in on key data insights and trends that can lead to practical recommendations based on your visuals is important. For example, when you show the grading dashboard that highlights a drop in math scores among all 7th-grade classes, it helps to analyze how this might be connected to issues with teaching standards when chatting during a faculty meeting. This insight can shift the conversation toward real solutions, like changing the curriculum to better support students.

How Standard Education can help you lead your meetings

Standard Education’s platform processes your district’s student data daily, providing actionable insights to improve school performance. Right before your presentation, you can quickly identify trends to share—from attendance to graduation rates and assessments.

Equip your school district to identify and address trends proactively using our real-time dashboards. Standard Education helps reduce the workload and empowers educators to lead with the right insights. Schedule a demo today.