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Data Use & Adoption

Walking the Walk & Talking the Talk of Equity Benchmarking

Analyzing equity benchmarks across a wide range of topics (i.e., education, health care, housing and economics) is much more feasible and important than ever before. The wealth of open data has placed public sector organizations…
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Quantitative Data Reflections: Innovating for Equity

Over the course of the last decade, public sector organizations’ collection, analysis and communication of data through an equity lens has significantly expanded.   We’ve had the opportunity to leverage some of these best practices…
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Going the Distance: What Analysts Can Learn from Boxers

As public sector organizations grapple with changing operational models to meet the demands of a significantly evolved world—especially around systemic equity—analysts can gain a lot of perspective from a boxer’s approach to maintaining and improving…
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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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Don’t Leave Data Use Behind During the COVID-19 Crisis

Last week, I presented on a virtual panel as part of the Carnegie Foundation Improvement Science in Education Summit using UPD’s Data Life-Cycle Framework. During the session, we heard from participants that there is a…
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From Post-Its to Pilot: The journey of the Teacher Preparation Data Project

We’ll begin this story in June of 2016, which marked the official start of the Teacher Preparation Data Project. Though even to get to this point, there were many early sources of inspiration, sketches on…
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Putting the “Drive” in “Data-Driven”

While Harvard Business Review’s latest article “Companies are Failing in Their Efforts to Become Data-Driven” focuses on investments in big data and artificial intelligence made by large corporations, we see the same issues at play…
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Data and Policies in Education

UPD is pleased to announce that Ana Quintana, Account Executive and seven-year veteran with the firm, has recently become a shareholder in the company. She leads UPD’s Ed-Fi and data system implementation practice which she…
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The Data Use Five

We believe that UPD was put on this Earth to help states, districts, and schools perform at fundamentally higher levels. Kids and parents deserve it, and our ever-globalizing economy needs it. As I reflect on our…
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Early Adopters and Journey Mapping: A Guide to the User Experience

Early adopters can teach us a lot about the usability of a new technology system. We can collect detailed feedback on user experience (UX) by utilizing Design Thinking techniques — in particular Journey Mapping —…
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