Building a data-informed culture that makes teachers feel supported

When Lorenzo Rizzo returned to Belton School District--the school district he’d once attended as a student--to become their new Assistant Superintendent of School Improvement, he wanted to build a culture in which professional learning was explicitly aligned to strategic priorities. To do so, he needed to capture data that would help his team assess progress. The main challenge? Shifting the culture to embrace this data required a thoughtful approach designed to build trust.

Case Study

St. Vrain Valley School District

Diane Lauer

Assistant Superintendent of Priority Programs and Academic Support

At the onset of an ambitious $2m 1:1 technology initiative, St. Vrain Valley Schools needed to both provide evidence of impact and maximize teachers' proficiency with the new tools. Using KickUp, St. Vrain was able to track progress during the year, make real-time changes, and accelerate professional learning by identifying and replicating success across the system.

Case Study

Ladue School District

Jennifer Allen

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction

After collecting feedback from teachers in the spring, Ladue School District is using KickUp to improve district-wide professional learning sessions and to monitor teacher growth during the 2017-18 school year.

Case Study

Belton School District

Lorenzo Rizzi

Assistant Superintendent of School Improvement

Belton Assistant Superintendent Lorenzo Rizzi needed a way to keep up with what was happening across all of his schools. Using KickUp, he was able to determine which aspects of his strategic plan needed more attention and create an improvement plan that he could monitor using teacher feedback, classroom walkthroughs, and community feedback.

Client Spotlight: Pleasanton Unified School District

Ken Rocha, Director of Secondary Education at Pleasanton Unified School District in California, needed to select a new ELA curriculum that reflected 21st-century learning and district-wide priorities. In addition to making the right decision, he also needed to make sure the process was transparent and resulted in a group decision that reflected student, teacher, parent and community voices. 

How to include data in your everyday decision-making

While many administrators know they want to promote a data-informed culture, it’s hard to know how to put this into practice beyond scheduled data meetings. That's why we’ve compiled a number of tips and tricks for incorporating professional development data into planning, decision-making, and implementation.

Meet our two newest team members

Earlier this month, KickUp welcomed two new members to our team: Sasha Kapur and Mar y Sol Esparza. Sasha and Mar y Sol will join our Client Success team, where their work will allow us to build out more capacity for serving new and current clients.

Announcing KickUp Reports 2.0

Our reports have undergone some major changes! Our Client Success Team now has the ability to create highly customized reports from your KickUp data. These new tools allow your client success manager to tailor reports to your specific needs: arranging the data visualizations in different configurations, restricting what data shows up where, and adding content and context for what the data means. That means we can help you tell your story to your audience in a way that’s clear and compelling

Client Spotlight: Ready Aim Teach

Amy Kines, founder of Ready Aim Teach, wasn't satisfied with simply knowing that attendees liked her professional learning workshops; she wanted to know what came after. Were teachers implementing their new practices? With KickUp's help, she set out to determine what impact her interventions had weeks after the workshop.

5 Tips for Creating an Effective Professional Learning Plan

Drafting a professional learning plan is a critical step for districts who want to set their teachers up for success. We've gathered resources for making sure your plan is coherent and actionable, including tips from two Missouri district leaders.