Blogs

In an ever-evolving educational landscape, it is crucial for districts to utilize Return on Investment (ROI) metrics to ensure that resources are being used effectively to improve student outcomes. Dr. Frederick Williams, the Superintendent of Dublin City Schools and Georgia Superintendent of the Year, has been a driving force in leveraging data-driven strategies to improve student achievement and drive continuous improvements within his district for nearly a decade. In a recent conversation with Jessica Williams from Level Data, Dr. Williams shared his insights and experiences on how the partnership with Glimpse, Level Data's return on investment platform, has evolved over the past 5 years. 

Level Data, a leading provider of validation, integration, compliance and talent solutions, acquires Red Cedar Solutions Group and Cedar Labs to enhance Level Data’s capabilities and strengthen the company’s commitment to providing comprehensive, high-quality data solutions for K-12 education.

Boston, MA November 1, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ – Level Data, Inc., North America's leading provider of validation, integration, compliance, and talent solutions, is excited to announce the acquisitions of Red Cedar Solutions Group and Cedar Labs. These acquisitions enhance Level Data’s capabilities and strengthen the company’s commitment to providing comprehensive, high-quality data solutions for K-12 education. 

Contact data from the original core contact fields in PowerSchool were automatically migrated to the new contacts structure in PowerSchool 11.1. Contact data was migrated for all students that have ever existed within a PowerSchool database - both active and inactive.

The State Data Validation Suite (SDVS) generic contacts rules consist of 16 rules on a “Contacts” tab and 23 rules on a “Contacts Reports” tab. These rules are provided to help users clean up existing and/or new contact data.

In today’s educational landscape, the role of educational technology, or ed tech, goes beyond handling daily administrative tasks. For school districts striving to manage and validate student data efficiently, and usefully, having the right tech tools is a must. A reliable ed tech partner doesn’t just help with daily operations; it becomes a true partner in streamlining processes and enhancing overall effectiveness. Here are five key reasons why school districts need educational tech partners and how these solutions can transform their data management, validation, and evaluation practices.

Understanding how well students are progressing is crucial for school districts aiming to invest wisely in educational resources. Effective assessment strategies not only help track student outcomes but also ensure that your budget is being used to its fullest potential. In this blog post, we'll explore how evaluations at various stages of the academic year can enhance your investment and drive positive student results. 

Are you currently navigating the intricate process of finalizing your budget plans while eagerly awaiting the return of student outcomes data? As you reflect on the progress and identify gaps from the previous school year, it's crucial to dive into the two different approaches for measuring both Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Instruction (ROI): The Forward Approach and The Backward Approach.

In today's digital age, technology is more than just a tool; it's a game-changer in education. From interactive learning platforms to virtual classrooms, technology has revolutionized the way students learn and teachers teach. But amidst the sea of tech options, how do educators ensure that they're investing in the right tools to drive positive student outcomes?

Recently, Level Data hosted the first learning session in the “Invest Smarter, Not Harder” series. During this session, we dove into the exciting world of Return on Investment (ROI) and how it's not just for big businesses anymore. We talked about how ROI can be a game-changer for school districts, setting them up for success in the ever-evolving landscape of education. So sit back and get ready to learn from one of the pros as we recap this enlightening discussion on this topic.

In the fast-paced world of educational technology, the quest for effective and strategic planning solutions that drive positive student outcomes has never been more crucial. Recently, we hosted an illuminating virtual chat (with the help from one of our distinguished customers) that unveiled the transformative power of Glimpse by Level Data, a cutting-edge tool designed to optimize school planning strategies and enhance student success.

So, let's jump right into the key insights and highlights from this engaging conversation. 

In the ever-evolving landscape of K-12 education, turnover is a constant reality. From students graduating, transferring, enrolling, and dropping out to administrators transitioning in and out of roles, the turnover rates in both student and administrative populations can present unique challenges for technology account management. 

In the dynamic landscape of education, where resources are often scarce and demands for student success are high, the role of Return on Investment (ROI) cannot be overstated. Every financial decision made by educational institutions should be viewed through the lens of its potential impact on student outcomes.  

In the world of education, every decision made by school administration carries weight. From allocating budgets to selecting academic resources, each choice impacts student outcomes and the overall success of the school. That's where Return on Investment (ROI) comes into play—a concept that's not just for businesses but also crucial for schools. 

In today's digital age, the security and privacy of student data have become one of the top concerns for educators, parents, and policymakers alike. With the increasing use of technology in classrooms, the amount of student data generated and stored has grown exponentially, raising questions about data security, privacy, and integrity.

Level Data, a leading validation software company, acquires RANDA Solutions, an enterprise data and workflow management company for State Education Agencies serving nine states with licensure and effectiveness platforms.

RealTime Reports will now allow schools/districts to control which reports are available to individual users. The new Visibility Settings will allow Administrators to control access to reports from both the Category and Individual Report Level. With the new Settings function schools/districts can now:

• Disable an entire Report Category for all users.
• Limit access to an entire Report Category to specific roles.
• Disable an individual Report for all users.
• Further limit access to individual Reports to specific roles.

KALAMAZOO, Michigan – <07/27/2023> – Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the leading financial measuring tools for businesses and industries everywhere, including school districts. But another ROI is even more important to schools, Return on Instruction.

Located within the State Data Validation Suite (SDVS) of services is the “Validation Summary Report”.  This reporting service is available for all users to see various statistics based on the number of records in violation of validation rules for your state. 

PowerSchool is a widely used student information system that helps educational institutions manage various aspects of their operations, including attendance tracking. Generating attendance reports is a crucial task for teachers and administrators, allowing them to monitor student attendance patterns and identify areas that may need improvement. In this blog post, we will provide a comprehensive guide on how to print attendance reports in PowerSchool.

In the fast-paced world of education, efficient management of student information systems is crucial. PowerSchool, a widely used student information system, offers powerful tools for administrators and educators to streamline their processes. One such tool is the Failure Report feature, which helps identify struggling students and provides valuable insights for intervention. In this blog post, we will walk you through the process of running a failure report in PowerSchool, empowering you to make data-driven decisions that support student success.

Maintaining accurate attendance data is essential in the educational environment.  Not only is attendance vital to student achievement, but also to school and district finances.  As a result, ensuring that attendance is being recorded consistently and calculated properly is of utmost importance.

Keeping track of attendance is an essential aspect of managing schools and educational institutions. PowerSchool, a widely-used student information system, provides a comprehensive platform for tracking attendance records. Calculating daily attendance percentage is a crucial task that enables educators to monitor student engagement and identify potential issues early on. In this post, we will guide you through the process of calculating daily attendance percentage in PowerSchool, making it a hassle-free task for educators.

Keeping track of student attendance is a vital aspect of any educational institution. PowerSchool, a popular student information system, provides a comprehensive platform for managing attendance records. Understanding the attendance codes used in PowerSchool is crucial for both teachers and parents to accurately assess a student's attendance patterns. In this blog post, we will explore the common attendance codes in PowerSchool and shed light on their meanings.

Collecting, tracking and analyzing school district data on students and staff is not an easy task, but there are fairly simple, low cost or no cost ways to try making it easier – and result in much greater data accuracy in the process.

In many ways, improving data quality and accuracy is a mindset.

Cindy Williams had the stiff neck and crisscrossed eyes to prove she’d done her job protecting the critical funding her school district needed but was in threat of losing.

She is now 100 percent confident that using State Data Validation Suite (SDVS) software from Level Data, Inc. – those days are over.

Williams, most recently running PowerSchool in her new district of Limestone Charter Association in South Carolina but who came from a large traditional district, learned the hard way a few years ago about keeping student funding in place for her former district.

When the state of Alabama implemented PowerSchool statewide in 2021 as the mandatory SIS for school districts, it not surprisingly forced many districts to make drastic changes to how they had been storing, tracking and managing student data.

Thankfully for data managers like Greg Titshaw, Technology Coordinator at Fort Payne City Schools in Alabama, Level Data Inc.’s State Data Validation Suite was included in the statewide implementation of PowerSchool.

Simply, it made life simpler.

And it made possible the drastically improved accuracy of the small school district’s data.

In an education world that has progressively shifted toward online options, the opportunity to allow parents to enroll their child online is available as well.

Yet when K-12 school districts consider that the journey of their student data can start outside of the district staff’s control, the pros and cons should be weighed heavily before making that software investment leap.

With the release of PowerSchool 23.5 (released May 2023), PowerSchool introduced a new “Enhanced User Interface” feature which implements an entirely new navigation structure to all PowerSchool pages. This new navigation structure required that our Level Data Apps services be restructured to comply with these new layout requirements.

With the release of PowerSchool 23.5 (released May 2023), PowerSchool introduced a new “Enhanced User Interface” feature which implements an entirely new navigation structure to all PowerSchool pages. This new navigation structure required that our Level Data Apps services be restructured to comply with these new layout requirements.

When the state of Alabama implemented PowerSchool statewide in 2021 as the mandatory SIS for school districts, it not surprisingly forced many districts to make drastic changes to how they had been storing, tracking and managing student data.

Thankfully for data managers like Greg Titshaw, Technology Coordinator at Fort Payne City Schools in Alabama, Level Data Inc.’s State Data Validation Suite was included in the statewide implementation of PowerSchool.

Simply, it made life simpler.

And it made possible the drastically improved accuracy of the small school district’s data.

Tish Brandt still thinks back in some disbelief at how cumbersome and time consuming the old way of reporting school data to the state was for her team at Cicero (IL) Public Schools.

“There we so many different layers of complication there,” Brandt said about the former process, before technology advances made it easier and more accurate.

The layers have been virtually eliminated since Cicero began working in 2021 with Level Data and its IT plug in of seamless and smooth reporting with the State Data Validation Suite (SDVS) – a software plug-in for users of PowerSchool.

School districts nationwide can now get real-time information in less than five minutes for more than two dozen categories ranging from attendance to gradebook analysis to truancy to lunch status to family lists and demographics, to discipline to mapping addresses for busing and tracking district demographic changes, to name a few.

As funding for school districts nationwide continues to get tighter, IT directors are seeking more solutions for managing user accounts.

Level Data, LLC in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is the first to offer school districts nationwide a direct to Microsoft Azure user account management service, eliminating the recurring expenses and maintenance costs of on-premises domain controllers.

When PowerSchool introduced Unlimited Contacts in 2018, many districts saw this as both a blessing and a curse.  With the long-time, limited ability to store contact data for students, PowerSchool was finally responding to years of calls for change.

With staff shortages and schools recovering from the chaos of the past few pandemic years, any savings of time by not duplicating efforts, especially when improved data accuracy comes with it, is certainly a welcoming sight.

Like all educators know, 2 + 2 = 4.

And like Technology, Learning, and Innovation Director, Jesse Sadlowski and Tina Carnegie,
Administrative Assistant and Tech Support know, clean and accurate student data = clean and accurate government reporting.

Accessing Student Data is a key element of any SIS. But taking that data and analyzing it typically requires exporting out of the system and manipulating it within some other external tool. One area that can be tricky, especially if no specific field is used, is identifying if a student resides in or out of the district. However, with the use of Level Data’s In-District Enrollment Status Report, users can now easily identify in-district versus out-of-district students with the click of a button.

Accessing student data is a key element of any SIS, but taking that data and analyzing it typically requires exporting out of the system and manipulating it with some other external tool. This is especially true when attempting to plan based on where your student population actually resides. But what if you could not only see where your students reside on a map but also be able to slice and dice the records by creating your own boundaries? Not only creating them but being able to share those regions with others. Well, with the use of Level Data’s new School Population Planning Report, users can now do just that.

Reviewing stored grades for students is a common activity for staff, especially for staff like principals and counselors. While retrieving data for individual students isn't too complicated, getting to the data for larger groups or even getting to a view that is a bit easier to read and that can be filtered based on specific criteria gets a bit more complicated. However, with the use of our Stored Grade Analysis Report, this process just got a whole lot easier.

Standard grading has become a popular method of tracking a student's achievement. While often used at the elementary level standards-based grading can be found at any level, configuring standards and entering scores is one part of the process, and reporting them is another. While the most common need is for individual student-based reports, schools often want to look at standards through a bigger window. However, generating this type of report is not a simple process. There aren't many built-in reports that can access the records schools need without complicated searches and exporting processes. But with the use of our Standards Grade Analysis Report, accessing standards grades has just gotten easier.

Student credit progress is one area that counselors and principals must constantly monitor. While reviewing data for individual students is fairly simple, it still involves either reviewing student records by a student’s historical grade screen, printing transcripts, or searching for and exporting the data out of the stored grades table. In any case, it often still involves manual manipulation of data just to get to the totals for students. Even then, finding out as a group which students are and are not on track can be a difficult and time-consuming process. However, with the use of our Credit Progress Report, that data is just a few clicks away.

Have you ever been asked for a list of students that are new to the school district? How about a list of students that have transferred out? What about those students that both came and left within the current year? If the answer is yes to any of the above, I can imagine gathering that data from PowerSchool was not a simple task. But now with the use of our Short Term Mobility Report, this data can be retrieved both quickly and easily whether running it from district office or an individual school. Answers to these questions are just a few clicks away.

One of the most frustrating issues when storing grades is going through the process only to find that there are students that don't appear to have a final grade for a class. Typically this means that time has to be taken to review each report card, reach out to the teachers in question, have them update the grades, and then repeat the process of storing grades and printing report cards.

But what if there was a way to make sure all grades were complete before storing grades? Well with the use of our missing grades report, you can do just that. This report will identify all students that don't currently have a final term grade. Enabling admin staff to notify teachers of exactly what grades are missing prior to storing grades.

Schools have seen a massive change in the structure recently. No longer is in-person learning the sole standard for many districts. In addition to five-day in-person learning, schools have also adapted virtual or remote learning options, as well as hybrid models. With the change, however, comes the complexity of tracking which students are assigned to which model. Schools initially employed a variety of methods to track this information from custom fields to tracks to cohorts, the options were varied which led to each district having to develop its own methods of storing and reporting on this data. 

It’s common knowledge in schools and even homes everywhere, that DOE most often refers to the Department of Education, whether nationally or locally.

Yet a key factor for schools to continue offering the best speed to learning for students everywhere is to make sure DOE does not alternately become an acronym for Delays, Omissions and Errors in student and teacher databases.

One area that many schools struggle each year with is identifying days students are considered unexcused absent. If a school uses daily attendance it really isn't much of an issue, but for schools that use meeting attendance, getting an accurate count can be difficult and time-consuming until now. 

1. Navigate to the validation on the State Data Validation screen for which a mass update is needed.  

Level Data Control Panel

The Level Data Control Panel allows districts to control which validation rules are run on their PowerSchool server. With the Control Panel, districts have the ability to do any of the following:

When school districts need to locate the home addresses of all their students on a map, most still use primitive and labor-intensive methods adopted over decades.

Monthly Webinars

Have questions about RealTime Reports or want to become fluent in turning your data into action? Join one of our live webinars hosted by seasoned data pros on the first Tuesday and Thursday of each month!

Please email helpdesk@leveldata.com if you have any questions or issues.

School districts nationwide have been feeling similar staffing challenges as the rest of the U.S. marketplace.

Fred Sharpsteen does not get too excited over new technology designed for schools after a quarter-century of seeing things come and go.

For schools that check daily attendance, retrieving detailed daily attendance records is only one piece of the puzzle. Identifying students that have accumulated multiple absences, tardies, or a combination of those codes, is often even more important.

While getting the day to day records for individual students is fairly straightforward, getting to that data for larger groups and then being able to filter based on specific codes or number of occurrences can complicate the process.

With the use of our Daily Attendance Summary by Code Report, schools can now retrieve aggregated daily attendance daily and easily filter the data by date range, attendance code, or number of occurrences.

Disciplined data is one area that schools strive to keep accurate and up-to-date records.

Entering data whether from logs or incidents is the easy part. Getting that data into a format that can be used for analysis is a different issue altogether.

Have you ever needed to just be able to quickly identify when different discipline issues happen? That is, wouldn't it be great if you could quickly get to a report that shows you how many times a particular discipline issue happens during each month of the school year? Getting to that data now would not only involve searching for and exporting the data but then having to manually manipulate and get it into a usable format. That is until now.

With the use of our Log Entries by Month Report, schools can quickly and easily see when issues are occurring in their school or distract and identify trends or develop intervention needs to address these issues with just a few simple clicks.

Attendance can be a complicated process.

Does your school use meeting attendance, daily attendance, a combination of both?

Depending on how your school enters attendance plays a huge part in what you can actually retrieve. Typically for schools to track meeting attendance, the only way to retrieve data is on a course-by-course basis.

However, what if you need to know for a student what codes were entered on a given day or how many times a specific code was entered. Maybe you need to know how many students had more than one, two, or three different codes assigned throughout the day. Getting to that data can be a rather cumbersome process. That is until now.

With the use of our Meeting Attendance Summary by Date Report, schools can now retrieve aggregated meeting attendance values for each student and easily filter the data by date range, attendance, number of occurrences, and even the number of unique codes assigned each day

Accessing basic student demographic data is really easy in PowerSchool.

But what about identifying students with the same household?

Again it's really easy if they're in the same school. But what if they were in different schools? Then this can only be accomplished when working at district level.

However, with the use of Family List by Street Address Report, users can now run the report at school level and not only will include students from the current school, but it'll also include students at other schools if they share the same home street address. Making it easy for school staff to identify addresses that have multiple students, even if they are at different schools.

Accessing basic student demographic data is a fairly easy process in PowerSchool.

But what about identifying students in the same household?

Again it's fairly easy if they're in the same school but if they are at different schools, this can only be accomplished by working at the district level. However, like with our Family List by Street Address Report, users can also run the Family List by Home Phone Report. This report can also be run at the school level and it will include both students from the current school, as well as students from other schools if they share the same home phone number – making it easy for school staff to identify phone numbers associated with multiple students even if they're in different schools. 

While schools mainly focus attendance reporting on individual students' dates or codes, there are many times when schools need to look at attendance values from a more summary view.

For example, looking at what codes have been assigned on a period or even day by day basis, this could provide valuable insight as to whether certain periods or days have higher rates of absent or tardy students than others. But getting to that data can often be a bit difficult and often requires exporting individual student attendance records and then manipulating that data outside of PowerSchool.

However, with the use of our School Attendance Summary Report, schools can now easily get a report that breaks down the count of attendance codes by period for each day within a selected date range.

For schools that track meeting attendance, retrieving detailed attendance records is only one piece of the puzzle. In many cases, schools have standard policies regarding the accumulation of certain attendance codes per class meeting.

As a result, identifying students that have accumulated a specific number of absences, tardies, or a combination of those is even more important.

While getting to the day-to-day records for individual students is pretty straightforward, getting to that data for larger groups and then being able to filter based on codes or numbers of occurrences just complicates the whole process.

With the use of our meeting attendance summary by code report, schools can now retrieve aggregated meeting attendance data and easily filter the data by date range, period, course, attendance code, and most importantly, number of occurrences. 

Accurate attendance tracking is an important process in any school. While entering the data is pretty straightforward, being able to retrieve that data in a quick and straightforward manner is another story, especially when trying to access data for multiple students, sections, periods, or days. But now with the use of our Meeting Attendance Details Report, schools can now retrieve meeting attendance records for any selected group of students for any date range and then narrow the results by student, attendance date, course, teacher, period, or code. 

Retrieving daily attendance records is a common practice in most schools. For schools that actually use daily attendance, typically through a bridge period, getting to this data is not too difficult.

But what about schools that use meeting attendance. For those schools trying to determine if a student was considered absent or present at a daily level is nearly impossible for the everyday user, that is until now.

With the use of our daily attendance details reports, schools can now retrieve daily attendance data regardless of their attendance setup.

Funding is a major concern for schools and making sure they're getting all the funding available is especially important.

One area of particular concern is funding based on a student's poverty status. In many instances, the information is based on a student’s lunch status.

Making sure that data is accurate is of particular importance as it not only affects reimbursement for meals but can also impact funding sources such as title and e-rate.

Unfortunately for schools, this data is often stored in multiple places so making sure the data is accurate is even more complicated. 

Funding is always a major concern for schools and making sure they're getting all the funding available is especially important.

One area of particular concern is funding based on a student's poverty status. In many instances, this information is based on a student's lunch status field.

Making sure that data is accurate is of significant importance as it not only affects reimbursement for meals but can also impact funding areas such as title and e-rate reimbursement.

Unfortunately for schools, this data is often stored in multiple places, so making sure the data is accurate is even more complicated. 

Districts often enter test scores into PowerSchool whether this means SAT or ACT scores at the high school, state testing scores for elementary or middle school students, placement test data for specific subject areas, or any other test scores that need to be available for review.

PowerSchool allows for the ability to enter this data for each individual student. Reviewing the data by students has always been the easy part. 

In many ways, attendance reporting has become a complicated and time-consuming process. It's no longer as simple as just marking students as absent or tardy and adding them up.

Attendance reporting now requires schools to not only show attendance totals for students but also to be broken down into a multitude of various categories. One such area includes defining the attendance data based on the student's lunch status.

There is no question that oodles and oodles of cash have been flowing into local school districts nationwide recently thanks to federal legislation through the American Rescue Plan.

These funds are targeted at supporting demographically underserved students and numerous other education efforts to mitigate the toughest challenges of Covid-19 recovery.

Disciplined data is one area that schools strive to keep accurate and up to data records.

Log entries are just one of the methods available to users.

The benefit of using logs is that schools can store more than just discipline entries. While common uses may revolve around areas such as discipline, parent and/or student contact, or even health records.

Schools can choose to use log entries to track an unlimited number of topics, set up log types, subtypes entry screens, or even creating log entries themselves is really the easy part.

Once entered though, getting to that data in a quick and easy manner is a little more complicated. That is until now. With the use of our log entry report, schools can now access student log records with just a few simple clicks.

Retrieving daily attendance records is a common practice in schools but for schools that use meeting attendance, trying to determine if a student was considered absent or present at a daily level is nearly impossible for everyday users.

If they can somehow figure out a student's attendance status for a given date, trying to then gather summary data of how many times a student was absent or present is even more complicated.

But now with the use of our Daily Attendance Summary by Date Report, schools can retrieve aggregated daily attendance values for students and easily filter the data by date range, calculated attendance value, and even the number of occurrences for each.

How often are your staff tasked with looking up students' current grades? What about generating at-risk reports or eligibility lists for participating in activities? What hoops do they have to jump through to get to this data and how long does it actually take?

Wouldn't it be great if you could get to this data with just a few simple clicks? Well, now you can with the use of our gradebook grades analysis.

This type of report is just a few clicks away. 

“Houston, we have a problem.”

Storing student transportation data has always been an option within PowerSchool. Identifying if a student is a car rider, bus rider, or uses some other means of transportation has been possible by populating that data to each student's individual transportation screen.

However, getting to that data for more than a single student at a time has been a different story altogether.

Creating a list of basics such as which students are car riders on a given day or which students ride bus 9, has never been easy because of how the data is stored. But now with the use of our Transportation Report, getting to that data can be quick and easy. 

Contract tracing has taken a prominent role in the life of many school administrators while the information they need to identify students that have been in close contact with other students is often contained in PowerSchool.

Being able to access that data quickly and easily in a usable way is a different story.

Contact Tracing has taken a prominent role in the life of many school administrators.

While the information they need to identify students that have been in close contact with a specific student is often contained in PowerSchool.

Being able to access that data quickly and easily in a usable way is a different story. 

Powerschool student program enrollment, the legacy option, not the add-on special ed software, has long been a standing option in PowerSchool. It allows districts the ability to create their own programs based on their specific needs. It’s a step above activities but not quite as involved as section enrollment.

Student programs allow districts the ability to enroll students, assign entry and exit dates, as well as add exit reasons or additional comments while offering flexibility in creating and enrolling students into programs.

Discipline data is one area in which schools strive to keep accurate and up-to-date records. Incidents is just one of the methods available to users.

Attendance. What can we say? It's no longer as simple as marking students tardy and adding them up. For many schools, tracking attendance with the multitudes of attendance codes and conversions becomes a full-time job.

Human error during data entry into any School District’s SIS still today remains one of the most problematic issues for keeping student and staff data clean and accurate. And it’s only getting worse as many districts nationwide have begun to allow parents to register their child online.

Public school districts nationwide – particularly smaller districts – continue to deal with penny-pinching budgets as numbers rise for students transitioning to Virtual Academies, Charter Academies, private schools, and homeschooling options.

One big advantage for smaller school districts is the ability for teachers, principals, and other staff to get to know the students on a very personal level. It leads to better educational opportunities in many ways and brings citizens of small communities together.

The ability to easily identify students that have been in contact with a student based on course enrollment and the date range is now at your fingertips, with the latest release of RealTime Reports.

What a wonderful world teachers, administrators, and counselors would be living in if they could – in a matter of minutes – easily track the local, state, and national test scores of their entire student body.

In a generation captivated with voter polls, sports rankings, and lists for best places to live, Belinda McEachern is certain who is her No. 1 – Level Data.

Dan Ralyea often finds himself in a unique position – where most of his contemporaries in state education data analysis look upon his state of South Carolina with envy.

No one in education wants an incident – but when something troubling does happen with any student or student groups, recording accurate data from the incident is imperative.

Vicky Sanchez, the Data Systems Specialist for Cheltenham (PA) School District, turned to Level Data to create a partnership to make sure their district’s annual Incident Management Reports to the Keystone state’s Safe Schools program were right the first time.

What she didn’t realize was how much more state reporting support and accuracy she would receive – plus large amounts of time saved – when utilizing Level Data’s State Data Validation Suite.

“It started with Incident Management, which is part of a huge report for ‘Safe Schools’ in Pennsylvania and we were having a lot of issues with that one report,” Sanchez said. “The report has so many different templates and components and a lot of our staff were not entering the information correctly and there were a lot of missing elements, conflicting information.

“So, the bottom line is we got Level Data’s State Validation Suite specifically for Incident Management. But the nice part is we have benefitted from all the other parts of State Validation as well – State Validation Suite tabs like demographics, enrollment, and the miscellaneous tabs that have different rules based on the state reporting rules that we use to cross-check our data entry. It makes sure we didn’t miss any information and that nothing’s mismatched.”

Student headcount accuracy is the most critical factor effecting government-funded school district budgets; few would question that fact.

Contact Tracing for Covid-19 infections – while difficult to do in most cases but proven to be effective in the fight to eradicate the virus – has recently become extremely easy and lighting quick for school districts nationwide because of a specialized plug-in for districts using PowerSchool as its Student Information System (SIS).

The ability to identify a location for a student is of prime importance for a school district employee. Determining where a student lives within school boundaries can affect funding for them from the State governmental agencies.

There is no question that in the near future, oodles and oodles of cash will be flowing into local school districts nationwide thanks to recent federal legislation.

Below is a simple and streamlined workflow allowing schools to quickly generate data required to determine their students' P-EBT eligibility using Level Data’s RealTime Reports.

Teachers, principals and counselors genuinely want to help students who are at-risk.
To do so, the first step is identifying those kids – and now there is an easy solution for such an enormous task – called RealTime Reports.

RealTime Reports seamlessly pulls a districts’ stored data to track broad trends with easy-to-review graphics and charts, yet also find students who otherwise slip through the cracks to lead school personnel to those in need with detailed lists.

The cleaner the better.

There is perhaps no better mantra for every school district staff member who is involved with entering, managing and validating staff and student data accuracy for internal use, state reporting and federal grant funding opportunities.

For PowerSchool users who utilize Level Data, Inc. applications, the features of automated cleaning and easily-guided fixes in State Data Validation are widely known.

Home Sweet Home.

If fellow data management and IT directors were to challenge Jay Childers to describe in one word what he likes to see within his school district’s workforce and its expansive student database, that’s an easy one:

As school districts nationwide scurried to implement full-blown online learning in the midst of COVID-19 shutting down virtually all school buildings in early 2020, Oxford Community Schools in Michigan was one of those in the best position of any district to make a seamless transition – a transition that is yet to be determined if it’ll be temporary or long-term on-line learning.

Oxford has roughly 8,000 students in multiple school settings. These include traditional seated students, plus Oxford Bridges, an alternative school for kids who would struggle to make it through a typical high school setting, and a program called Crossroads, for adjudicated youth.

If Level Data cannot do a needed data task for Farmington Municipal Schools, it probably cannot be done by anyone.

That is the conclusion of the district’s Chief Technology Officer, Robert Emerson, since teaming up with Level Data to help the district synchronize and automate its student and teacher data in PowerSchool with Active Directory, Google and its OneRoster service. Even in a very unique situation, school officials discovered a K-12 science curriculum that was inaccessible for several months, and Level Data quickly provided the necessary tools for Emerson's team to overcome this hurdle.

Bad data reporting is no laughing matter to the IT staff of Kalispell School District #5.

Data Analyst Kyra Ocker said years of struggling with inaccurate data and ineffective information processes were a constant challenge the district grappled with until her district signed on for Level Data’s State Data Validation Suite. What had been a long running series of manual data-entry processes that allowed for ongoing human error – costing 1-2 hours a day manually cleaning data for state reports – has since become a spotless data point-of-pride for the 6,000-student school district. 

As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the nation, schools everywhere were discovering a somber truth - many people within their districts couldn’t count on a reliable internet connection. One district in rural Texas located due-South of the Greater Austin area found that 1-in-3 people, counting staff and students alike, lived in “dead zones” without internet or cell service. They were completely cut-off from the digital world at home through no fault of their own and falling behind because of it.

Education is unique among industry sectors because of the extreme rate of turnover. When viewed from a 30,000-foot perspective, the "churn-rate" for students enrolling, transferring, dropping out or graduating from even a modestly sized district is enough to eclipse all but the biggest multinational companies. Add in the rate of burnout for educators - roughly 50% of teachers leave the field within their first 5 years - and it's plain to see why having a holistic account provisioning plan is critical for a district's technology infrastructure, digital security and user access plans. 

According to a recent study, a majority of surveyed districts used at least 26 different software applications to meet the needs of their needs. The demands of the front office are wholly different than the needs of a teacher's gradebook, the lunchroom's food service database and the transportation department's CRM. With a smattering of different systems employed, a range of potential security risks is all but inevitable. 

The majority of school districts in the United States employ at least 26 different software platforms or applications to meet the functional demands of their district. Trying to manually guide data across so many platforms while maintaining the accuracy and integrity of that information would require hours of work from a dedicated team - time and resources that many districts simply can’t afford to sacrifice on peripheral tasks. 

Maximizing school district funding value is crucial in the education landscape of today. School districts work hard to ensure that every penny of available reimbursement dollars is fully accounted for.

Level Data applications integrate tightly with PowerSchool. These include page enhancement applications like RealTime Validation, and full page applications like State Data Validation and Validation Reporting.

Each of these applications has options available to help District Administrators apply the appropriate security options, as per their district policies and following PowerSchool security guidelines.

This document outline how Level Data’s PowerSchool applications integrate with PowerSchool’s security mechanisms in order to properly secure the applications.

Several months ago, we made significant updates with respect to respect PowerSchool’s two main security mechanisms: Page Level Security and Field Level Security. Please be sure to update your SDVS bundle soon. Version 2.x will no longer be supported as of April 1, and will be deactivated entirely on July 1, 2020.

The only way to prevent disruptions to your service is update your bundle to the latest version.

This document outlines three methods of installing Level Data’s PowerSchool applications, and provides a brief overview of the security configuration settings.