Will we meet you in St. Louis? Ways to connect with KickUp at Learning Forward 2019

2019's Learning Forward Annual Conference is almost here! KickUp is thrilled to once again power the conference evaluation and present sessions with our innovative K-12 PD partners from across the country. Check out all the ways to connect with us over four days of building capacity and changing practice.

Putting PD Feedback Data to Work: Takeaways from Texas

Professional development feedback gets a bad rap. District leaders and PD directors often consider it subjective and shallow, focusing on verifiable metrics instead: hours clocked, attendances logged and sessions completed. But participant feedback can be an untapped treasure trove of actionable data, and innovative PD leaders are using it to formatively evaluate programs for in-the-moment success. We recently talked to the directors of two Texas districts about the ways they’re listening to — and using — post-PD feedback.

Actionable data: Turning subjective goals to concrete outcomes

How do you balance maintaining compliance, hitting district goals, and doing the real work of inspiring your teacher-leaders to achieve? It’s not by defaulting to the safety of easily-measurable but shallow metrics — it’s by sharpening the focus of the qualitative changes.

PD Feedback Data for Continuous Improvement

A conversation between two busy, high-volume Texas districts on gathering and effectively using PD feedback for continuous improvement and impact assessment.

Actionable data: Teacher PD, logic models, and connecting activities to outcomes

When we talk about impact in K-12 education, the conversation inevitably turns to outcome data (like student test scores). And it's true that the ultimate accountability is to our students. But what about the work that comes between? What if there were a hundred tiny invisible factors feeding into those outcomes? What if there were a way to identify, measure, and align them from the start?

Actionable data: Evaluating professional learning ROI

Join KickUp as we examine six of the most common roadblocks to thriving data cultures. With practical tips, guiding questions, and real-life examples of districts excelling through data, you can push your professional learning program to new levels of effectiveness.

Case Study

Comal Independent School District

Hanna Schramm

Director of Professional Learning

In 2015, San Antonio-area Comal Independent School District launched Comal U, a new multi-day PD institute providing summer learning hours for each of the district's 1,300 teachers. KickUp worked with Comal to build out a custom event management and credit tracking system aligning with both state policy requirements and Comal’s own curriculum. With the time saved seamlessly managing, tracking and coordinating a high-volume event series, Comal U added 15 more sessions the very first year — and counting.

Case Study

Youngstown City School District

Greg Kibler

Deputy Chief of Data

Struggling with academic outcomes in an economically-disadvantaged region, Youngstown City School District needed to shift instructional practice with a focus on equity. With Kickup, YCSD built a data framework that invested teachers in their own feedback and coordinated real-time interventions to what students needed most. The results? A strategic alignment that's closing the achievement gap across demographics.

KickUp Closes $1.75M Series A Round

Founded in 2015 by two teachers who wanted to improve professional learning for all educators, KickUp's software-as-a-service platform helps K-12 school districts and PD providers schedule and manage job-embedded professional learning, assess program impact, and use formative data to drive better decision-making. Today, KickUp’s platform is used by more than 100,000 teachers. The Series A funding will be deployed to accelerate the company’s customer growth and platform expansion.

Blast walkthroughs: how to build protocols that make the most of observation data

One of the most powerful data collection strategies a district can employ is walkthroughs. They can provide clear, actionable feedback about how professional learning efforts are translating into the classroom. But making them effective requires setting up strong protocols and building a culture of teacher buy-in so that they can serve their purpose as formative assessment without feeling too evaluative to teachers.