Holistic, actionable data are essential to realizing the promise of student success systems. While a district or school’s core student information system can often provide the data and visualizations that student success teams use for reflection and tracking, many districts are also developing their own tools for this purpose. A new publication from Digital Promise, Innovating for Student Success: District-Led Innovation Showcase, highlights some common motivations among districts who invest in developing their own tools, features five examples of custom-built tools, and summarizes some of the cross-cutting lessons from districts that have gone this route. 

A golden rule of improvement work is “you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” That is certainly true when it comes to displaying improvement data. Putting the right data, at the right time, in the hands of those who need it, is key to improving student outcomes.