Strategic Data Project Convening 2026

Session Description: Strategic plans often launch with fanfare but struggle to stay relevant during implementation. Guilford County Schools (GCS) addressed this through its Roadmap to Success framework for progress monitoring and strategic refresh. This session explores how GCS built monitoring capacity and gathered feedback to inform the next phase of work. Using strategy maps and balanced scorecards, we’ll preview how to measure what matters and communicate progress holistically. Participants will gain ideas for data-informed strategic planning.

Intended Audience: Districts, charters or other local education agencies; Data analysts or independent researchers; Senior leaders (including cabinet-level leaders and executive directors)

Session Description:

Education leaders often need to turn complex data into clear, usable tools for planning and decision-making. In this hands-on session, participants will use a teacher workforce planning example to learn how R Shiny apps are structured and how interactive features are built. The session will introduce the roles of global.R, ui.R, and server.R, then guide participants through simple edits that change the app layout, connect outputs to server logic, and add user controls that update what the app displays.

Participants will leave with a fully functional Shiny app template based on the Teacher Workforce Planning Tool being used at the Delaware Department of Education, available through GitHub: https://github.com/MatthewFaiello/twpt_shiny_app_toy

Intended Audience:
This session is designed for SEA, LEA, charter, and education nonprofit staff who work with data or decision-support tools, including analysts, program managers, data and technology leaders, and senior leaders who want a practical introduction to interactive data applications.

This session assumes participants have an understanding of R syntax and basic data manipulation and visualization skills.

Session Description: Community colleges often celebrate high transfer rates, yet students who transfer without a credential face weaker long-term outcomes. This session shares a case study from Madison College where disaggregated data revealed a hidden completion risk among high-momentum transfer and dual credit students. Participants will explore how evidence reshaped advising, governance metrics, and partnerships, and reflect on how to communicate honest results in ways that strengthen completion and trust.

Intended Audience: Managers of data or technology teams; Senior leaders (including cabinet-level leaders and executive directors); State education agencies; Philanthropies and Foundations

Session Description: What happens when Early Childhood Educators drive research and data analysis about the sector? This session explores a Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Policy model developed for Black and Latine women in ECE. Based on the report "Participatory Action Research and Policy Change" we will explore model design, impact on worker agency, and strategies for successful implementation. System and policy leaders will gain insights into how to implement PAR to improve listening, empathy, and trust.

Intended Audience: Senior leaders (including cabinet-level leaders and executive directors); Philanthropies and Foundations; Nonprofit organizations

Session Description: Education research often fails to influence decisions because findings are communicated in ways that are accurate but not actionable. In this interactive workshop, participants will learn and practice evidence-based strategies for writing clear, concrete, and decision-ready insights that communicate what works and why, using real examples from education research. This session is designed for analysts, researchers, and education leaders who want their evidence to be understood, trusted, and used in practice.

Intended Audience: Data analysts or independent researchers; Service providers; Districts, charters or other local education agencies

Full Session: This session is at or near capacity. Please be sure to fill in every seat where possible.

Session Description: Many education organizations often treat evidence as an afterthought, rather than a crucial basis for decision-making. These organizations often lack a culture of asking the right questions and relying on evidence for decision making. In this session, participants will identify gaps in evidence use in their organizations and discuss strategies for how to create - and sustain - a culture of evidence and inquiry in their roles.

Intended Audience: Districts, charters or other local education agencies; State education agencies; Institutions of higher education; Nonprofit organizations; Philanthropies and Foundations; Service providers; Data analysts or independent researchers; Managers of data or technology teams; Senior leaders (including cabinet-level leaders and executive directors)

Session Description: Many data practitioners serve as the sole data voice within functional departments or small organizations where they must navigate cultures unfamiliar with rigorous evidence. This session brings these lone strategists together to swap strategies for establishing trust, managing workflows, and avoiding duplicative silos. Data strategists in LEAs/SEAs in HR, Finance, Safety, Federal Programs, etc.—and anyone serving as a "team of one"—are encouraged to attend and find their people.

Intended Audience: Data analysts or independent researchers; Districts, charters or other local education agencies; Philanthropies and Foundations

Session Description: Data initiatives often fail at the adoption stage due to user resistance and data grief. This structured exchange will convene leaders, analysts, and directors to crowd-source solutions for managing data change. Participants will rotate through themed round tables on easing emotional resistance, aligning system design to user workloads, and building trust between data builders and decision-makers.

Intended Audience: Districts, charters or other local education agencies; Managers of data or technology teams; Senior leaders (including cabinet-level leaders and executive directors)"

Session Description:  This session is centered on aligning behavioral health metrics with key P–20W milestones (e.g., kindergarten readiness, 9th-grade transition, postsecondary persistence/completion, and early workforce outcomes). 

School mental health is often treated as a support function separate from academic outcomes measured in service counts and compliance checkboxes rather than in evidence that moves students forward. This session challenges that framing. Too often, state policy and frontline practice operate with different mental models of what "good" looks like. State agencies optimize for reportable metrics; school counselors and community health workers respond to what they see in the room. This session examines the confidence gap between those two realities and offers a framework for closing it.

Participants will leave with:

• A P–20W indicator alignment map connecting behavioral health measures to key educational milestones
• Practical guidance on reframing mental health data as "barriers to learning" and "bridges to the workforce" for different stakeholder audiences
• Lessons from the field on building data systems that are useful to both policymakers and practitioners — not just one or the other

This session is designed for data strategists, state agency leaders, and district decision-makers who are ready to move beyond counting services and toward using behavioral health data.