How good reporting and embedded analytics impact education

School administrators and educators are responsible for creating an environment for students to thrive. To accomplish this in a personalized and efficient way, decision-makers need easy access to high-quality data. Tracking student progress and identifying performance gaps through insights is the only reliable way to individualize learning, optimize resource allocation, and improve learning outcomes. 

The impact of effective reporting on student and school performance

A reliable reporting system streamlines workflows and provides in-depth insights that can help improve student and school performance in several ways.

Data-driven decision-making

Accurate information is fundamental to making the right decisions. Using embedded reporting allows educators to access real-time data within applications they are already using to ensure their decisions are timely and accurate. Having instant access to insights is crucial for evaluating student attendance trends, aggregating test scores, and guiding a teacher's response.  For example, students falling behind in attendance, homework submissions, or test scores can be given additional support, counseling, or mentoring in a timely fashion. 

Personalized learning and targeted interventions

Everyone who has worked in education knows that personalized learning paths and timely interventions are essential to meeting the needs of every student. Without a proper reporting tool, developing a customizable plan for each individual is often too expensive and time-consuming. This is not the case when personalized reports can be automated so that every student can track key benchmarks, highlight areas of success, and identify areas of improvement.

Real-time reports can autonomously analyze trends in absenteeism to find patterns that may call for intervention. For example, analysis may show that a student is absent more often on a certain day of the week, possibly indicating something they are trying to avoid on that day. Once the pattern is recognized, educators can better identify the root cause and plan for corrective action to encourage the student not to miss school. 

Resource allocation and optimization

As school districts aggregate data from multiple schools, they can more easily identify underperforming areas and manage available resources like funding, staff, technology, and facilities to better address disparities and optimize student achievement across the district.  

Having embedded reporting that can collect information from various data sources to benchmark performance means that decision-makers can easily find areas for improvement and act quickly. For example, they can discover that a school within their district has a higher-than-average absentee rate and a smaller support staff to student ratio. By identifying these patterns of high absentee rates and low levels of support staff, decision-makers can uncover root causes and allocate resources more effectively, simplifying the resolution of complex challenges.

Key considerations when choosing a reporting and analytics platform

There are several reporting and embedded analytics platforms to choose from. Let’s explore the key features you should look for when deciding which platform is right for you.

Ability to connect to various data sources 

A robust reporting and analytics platform seamlessly integrates multiple data sources, such as student information systems, attendance records, and assessment tools. This allows educators and administrators to consolidate data into a single, comprehensive view for more actionable insights. 

For example, a district administrator could pull data from attendance systems and state test scores to identify schools with high absenteeism and lower academic performance. This allows them to allocate resources and implement targeted intervention programs more effectively to mitigate negative trends. This connectivity streamlines decision-making and ensures all stakeholders work with the most up-to-date information.

Ad hoc and self-service reporting

Choose a reporting and analytics platform that allows you to easily create and customize reports without the need for developers or IT support. When the software has powerful features and a user-friendly design, it allows users to personalize the data they analyze and guarantees that data remains relevant to the user's immediate needs. 

When teachers and facilitators can find the data they need without technical support, they are encouraged to carry out proactive data exploration. This means they can look into data for specific questions about districts, schools, and classrooms. For example, with ad-hoc reporting, a teacher can generate a custom report to identify trends in student performance across different classrooms, enabling a course correction before issues escalate. 

Pixel-perfect reporting for compliance and detail

Data accuracy is paramount when submitting operational reports for district or state reviews. Pixel-perfect reporting ensures compliance with strict reporting standards while simplifying the presentation of complex data for accurate and effective analysis. With these types of reports, you have full control over every element's position, size, and placement, ensuring you deliver the data in exactly the way you want. 

Seamless embedding 

By embedding reporting capabilities into existing educational platforms, you reduce the perceived learning curve of new software, which often deters people from adopting new technology. Embedded reporting relieves the need for non-technical educational staff to learn an entirely new interface, navigation, login process, and workflows.

Multi-tenancy platforms allow different schools or districts to use a shared software instance to serve multiple users. This approach benefits from:

• Improved decision-making by providing real-time data within existing workflows

• Increased user engagement due to seamless integration within applications

• Cost savings by eliminating the need to build a separate reporting system

• Better data accessibility for users

• Enhanced scalability to adapt to growing business needs

• The ability to customize reports to specific requirements within the application itself

Finally, multi-tenancy platforms should provide robust information security including user authorization and the ability to customize access permissions.

Success story: How Jaspersoft reporting transformed business for Illuminate Education

Illuminate Education, a data-focused education software company, had the challenge of spending too much time manually producing reports. The reports were coded in PHP and then exported to Excel sheets. This repetitive activity distracted the team from their core focus of online testing and scheduling. 

Illuminate Education needed a solution to generate reports for various state testing programs that different stakeholders would access. These included districts, principals, teachers, students, and parents. One issue Illuminate Education faced was that while real-time data was available, their reporting system was too slow to process these updates. 

To solve the problem, they embedded Jaspersoft reporting and analytics tools into the Illuminate system using an open-source model. Custom reports could be quickly created with built-in charting and graphing capabilities, which are crucial for meeting the diverse needs of stakeholders across different states and districts. This allowed teachers to visualize class test score performance over a school year, or district administrators could better identify trends in underperforming schools.

With Jaspersoft, non-technical users could generate custom reports in days rather than months. The data in the reports became more current and allowed for more accurate decision-making. This technological upgrade had a direct impact on Illuminate’s business. They expanded from operating in three states to 42 states within a few years and now serve over 1,600 schools representing 6 million students.

Empowering education through quality reporting

To provide the best educational experience for all academic stakeholders, you need a data management and reporting system that works for all users. Administrators, teachers, students, and parents all need to be able to easily access information and create customizable reports based on real-time information. 

Jaspersoft offers a flexible reporting and analytics solution that can easily connect to your current systems and be embedded into an existing application. Our platform seamlessly integrates via modern API access for improved accessibility and adaptability. With self-service ad hoc capabilities and pixel-perfect reporting, Jaspersoft helps deliver the data visualizations and analytics your customers want.

Contact us to discover how Jaspersoft can help you drive better learning outcomes today.

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