SchoolBase

The SchoolBase application gives school administrators and school district officials access to a wide array of school performance and assessment data.

Client: Cartographic Modeling Lab, University of Pennsylvania

Challenge: Schools collect a significant amount of data on student demographics, attendance, and achievement. This data contains a wealth of information that could be used for planning and improvement purposes, when organized and presented in a coherent manner. The School District of Philadelphia turned to the University of Pennsylvania’s Cartographic Modeling Lab (CML) to help them develop a system for organizing, mapping, and analyzing school performance indicators.

Solution: Avencia collaborated with the CML to develop SchoolBase, a web-based software application that enables visitors to create maps, charts, summary statistics, and trend analyses at a variety of geographic levels including school, elementary school catchments, school district clusters, Free Library districts, and health districts, as well as more traditional political and, census boundaries.

Outcomes: SchoolBase provides School District of Philadelphia administrators with easy access to data, helping them to understand and track what is happening throughout their district. SchoolBase’s data management and visualization capabilities cut down on the time school district administrators much spend sorting through and organizing data, increasing their ability to draw meaningful conclusions and inform positive change in their schools.