Charter schools across Missouri face similar barriers when it comes to accessing and using data to guide their work. Schools often use a wide array of platforms for attendance, behavior, academics, surveys, and human resources—and most of these platforms do not easily communicate with one another. School staff spend excessive time on manual data cleaning, spreadsheet workarounds, and compiling reports, which leaves little time for data analysis, interpretation, or action.

In 2023, Exponent conducted a diagnostic review of data capabilities across Missouri charter schools. Key findings included:

• Data integration across systems is a common and persistent challenge;
• Internal processes and policies for managing data are inconsistent or lacking;
• Too much staff time is spent wrangling data, with too little time spent on insight-generation; and
• Limited capacity exists for building internal dashboards or developing a data warehouse.

The Missouri Charter School Data Accelerator is designed to solve these challenges by partnering with selected schools to build and sustain modern data infrastructure. This includes data warehouses built in Google BigQuery, dashboards built in Tableau, and secure data pipelines that sync information nightly from priority systems.

By the end of their participation, schools will have a fully operational set of data tools that support planning, monitoring, and reflection. Leaders will be better equipped to identify trends, spot issues, and measure progress against goals. Dashboards will be securely accessed through a web-based portal and optimized for use by school- and network-level leaders.

Read the full Request for Proposals – Round 2 at the link below

Request for proposal