Burbio School Tracker 6/17: Distribution Patterns

1. Burbio maintains a database of district checkbook registers covering over 20 million PreK-12 students. Information is searchable down to the district level, and clients use the information for competitive intelligence. This week we present a profile of select vendors highlighting the difference in the sizes of their school district customers. For this analysis we went through these steps:

• Broke down the distribution of Burbio's database by school district size, presented below. 
• Broke down the distribution of school districts who had written a check to particular vendors by size of district.  
  • For example, if a vendor had 60 school districts in our database that had paid them, and 10 came from each enrollment size bucket (listed below), then the figures would read "16.7%" for each. 

The exercise allows us to look at some example vendors whose customer bases skew larger or smaller in the market. In the chart below with the raw figures we bolded some numbers for emphasis. You will note that Kendall Hunt and Solution Tree have the highest skew towards larger districts, while Wilson Language's customer base skews smaller: 

Below is a stacked bar chart showing the same data:  

2.  One of the capabilities of Burbio's AI-powered Signals Tracker is to identify when new district administrative staff in highly specific positions are appointed to positions. This week we look at the role of Assistant Superintendent, a key decision maker in many client purchasing categories:

The position of Assistant Superintendent can vary in responsibilities, and here are three different positions recently filled: 

• Irvington Union Free School District, NY, has appointed a new Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment.
• Westfield Washington School District, IN, has appointed a new Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations.
• West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, NJ, has appointed a new Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Services and Planning. 

We often see Principal positions being promoted to Assistant Superintendent roles. Two recent examples: 

• Norwood City School District, OH, has moved the principal of Norwood Middle School to Assistant Superintendent.
• George County School District, MS, moved their principal of Rock Creek Elementary School to the position of Director of Student Assessment & Elementary Curriculum, while filling the Rock Creek principal position with a teacher currently working in the district.

Signals from Burbio's data, regardless of the question, can be integrated into go-to-market strategies via CRMs. 

3. Burbio's database of school board meeting minutes, strategic plans, and state grants include highly specific discussions of English Language Learning programming and funding opportunities. This week we take a look at discussions of ELL, Multi-Language Learner, Bilingual Learner, and related terms in school board meeting minutes. The following chart shows the percentage of districts that mention these terms at least once in the indicated quarter. The data indicates that discussion of the topic has not changed over the last eighteen months:

There is a broad area of service providers in ELL, and discussions cover everything from programming, outsourced staffing and training, to budgetary issues. From our Signals Tracker, we find the following examples: 

• Stockton Unified, CA,  is launching an English Language Development and CTE Pilot Program. With "high suspension rates and low academic performance in ELA/Math for Long Term English Learners," the program sets out to "Determine the viability of delivering ELD Content through STEM Instruction."
• Community Consolidated School District 93, IL, did an extended presentation on the district's dual language program, with a discussion on the balance between transitional bilingual education (TBE) students and non-TBE students in the program.
• In Steamboat Springs School District, CO, they are conducting a curriculum review for their Emerging Bilingual and Biliteracy Programs.
• Pittsburgh Public Schools, PA, contracted with an outside service to teach five ESL certification courses for Pittsburgh teachers.
• Bayonne School District, NJ, have hired multiple ESL teachers for their summer credit recovery program.
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools, NC, held a Special Legislative Breakfast Meeting with seven local lawmakers. One asked the Board "about the immigration influx affecting budgetary increase." The response was "CMS has the largest number of multilingual learners in the state and that the district has invested heavily in multilingual teachers, made changes to the curriculum, and provided additional training to classroom teachers."