Dive Brief:

• A massive amount of student data is produced via ed tech products, assessments, reading and math programs, daily quizzes, student history and more, but this data often lacks interoperability, according to The Hechinger Report.
• Interoperability would allow each of those sets of data to be viewed in context of the others, across systems, essentially piecing together a puzzle that is currently on educators to complete themselves.
• Making the data interoperable would also give time back to educators as a result, as they would no longer have to log into multiple systems and download spreadsheets to manually analyze the data.

Dive Insight:

Simply put: Schools and districts can gather all of the student data in the world, but it won't mean a thing if they don't have the means to easily interpret and make use of it. Part of the promise of the data analytics side of ed tech is that it's supposed to simplify tracking student progress and achievement for administrators and educators. Having to log in to multiple systems and gather the data for their own analyses defeats that purpose, and even more so in meetings.

When adopting student information systems and other platforms, administrators should ensure that they play well with other platforms in use and gather that data in a way that's meaningful and easy to interpret. By insisting on interoperability up front, schools can encourage vendors to make such changes and produce a more educator-friendly data environment.