Blog
Learning never stops.
The UPD team is constantly looking for ways to learn more about our industry and, by extension, improve the results we achieve for our clients. Our blog is where we share our latest thinking.
Not so special education
The pandemic caused a painful disruption to public education. From mid-March to mid-April, virtually every school district in the country closed its doors and sent children home to a largely failed experiment in virtual learning....
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Essential Habits of an Effective Data Governance Committee
Nancy Smith is a UPD friend and Principal Consultant and CEO at DataSmith Solutions. We are happy to have her as a guest blogger this week. Organizations collect a lot of data for a variety…
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“I’m not good at Math” in the midst of COVID
The Math struggle is real. Starting in third grade, I became convinced that I was just no good at math. As an educator, I saw hundreds of students who had the same belief I did,…
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The Secret to Successful Data Governance: Change Management
If you are trying to stand up a data governance practice within your organization and wonder why it isn’t getting a lot of traction, you may be overlooking a critical piece to your implementation—change management. ...
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(Re)Open Arms*: Planning for Back to School in Tulsa during COVID
*We know that hugging won’t be allowed during the pandemic, don’t worry! Thanks to generous philanthropic support, a team of UPD consultants has spent the past two months supporting the reopening planning team at Tulsa...
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“Lost Time Is Never Found Again” –Ben Franklin
Our school districts are moving forward with reopening plans for the fall. The first day of school is looming and the waiting game is up. They have to make thousands of decisions with zero certainty...
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From EDEN to EdFacts, STATS DC has always been there.
Among the many events that all of us are missing during this time of COVID, for some of us very important events like graduations and others we count on year over year. Normally, I would…
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Building Affordable Housing to Stabilize Schools
This past January UPD kicked off a project in partnership with the Baltimore Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) funded through a Fannie Mae Innovation Challenge Grant. (See a video of our CEO Doug...
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Modernization through Innovation: Increasing Capability through Systems, Processes, and People
Why do we do what we do? Is it the best way to achieve our desired outcomes? How do we know? Innovation drives improvement. It begins with good fundamentals that are affirmed through a process…
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Juneteenth: Let’s Band(wagon) Together
It’s nice to see mainstream white America coming to grips, however slowly, with the importance of acknowledging past wrongs and scraping away some of the historical whitewash used to alleviate (or maybe avoid) the white...
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