Burbio School Tracker 3/18: District Signals

1. Burbio's foundational school district dataset spans millions of pages of documents in tens of thousands of formats. Until recently, Generative AI tools struggled to deliver precise, qualitative insights given the complexity and lack of consistency inherent in PreK-12 reporting. That has now changed.
 
The power and reasoning capabilities of AI can now be applied against Burbio's data to deliver highly relevant and immediately actionable answers - to literally any question - at scale. This map is an example - asking "What districts are considering a STEM or CTE program expansion?" - from just the last six weeks of school district board meeting minute reporting, and clients can immediately review the signals:

Below are two example discussions from the districts above:

• In Weber School District, UT, the CTE director announced at their February board meeting the district had received a $5 million grant designed to assist students for opportunities in a wide array of medical fields. 
• At Corvallis K-12 Schools, MT, the district is part of an effort to fill needs for equipment manufacturing for local employer Glaxosmithkline, and the board discussed the introduction of Pathways curriculum for next Fall.   

Next up is a map of districts considering a new bond or tax levy:

From the map above, here are some example discussions:

• Williamston Community Schools, MI, is taking bids for locker rooms and tennis courts as they spend against a bond that covers a new school, district HVAC upgrades, a new gym, and arts improvements.
• York City School District, PA, ratified the purchase of several real estate parcels, the site of a prospective Cyber School, administrative offices, and classrooms. 
• Pine Richland School District, PA, discussed their capital plan, which includes consideration of new bond issuances. 

A final example is a map of districts considering new math curriculum:

Here are some excerpts from above:

• Wappingers Central School District, NY, is starting a curriculum resource and review process for math in grades K-8. 
• Owen J. Roberts School District, PA, discussed a "potential new resource for the middle school mathematics students, and piloting new materials this year."

For a demo of this capability click here to schedule a meeting. 

2.  With the five-year anniversary of Covid-19 driven school shutdowns we revisit Burbio's pioneering School Opening Tracker, which measured school disruptions during the 2020-22 period. Burbio tracked thousands of districts weekly to measure virtual, hybrid, and learning modes. A few notes:

• The Tracker made its debut on CNBC's Squawk Box with news that over 50% of U.S. K-12 students would be starting the school year virtually in the Fall of 2020. 
• Burbio's weekly Tracker on school reopenings provided an authoritative, data-driven, play-by-play of school policies and behaviors during the Covid-19 period. 

The index was cited across thousands of media reports and has been used in major academic studies on the impact of school closures. Below are two charts that highlight the critical data Burbio captured. The first shows the percent of K-12 students in certain learning modes over the course of 2020/21:

Below is a state-by-state in-person index of learning during 2020-21:

3. We continue our analysis of differences in the prevalence of industry terms by district locale in board minutes. The charts below show the percentage of school districts that mention MTSS and SEL terms at least once during calendar 2024.