Blogs

Managing data for K-12 school districts presents a unique set of challenges. Districts handle vast amounts of information, ranging from student attendance and academic performance to staff records and financial data. Ensuring the accuracy and security of this data is extremely important, yet the process is often complicated by outdated systems, limited budgets, and varying levels of technological proficiency among staff.

Additionally, compliance with state and federal regulations adds another layer of complexity, requiring attention to detail and constant updates to data management practices. Balancing these demands while striving to improve educational outcomes makes data management a critical, yet daunting, task for school districts.

Level Data's Validation tool has been a game-changer for school districts like Peninsula School District, in Washington State and Rhea County School District in Tennessee, both who have been using Validation for more than five years. In a recent conversation, Carol Winget, Student Database Administrator from Peninsula School District, and Tim Jones, System Software Specialist from Rhea County, reflected on their experiences and the impact the tool has had on their data management processes.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.