ConvergeEDU

Vision: We envision a world in which all schools and districts have real-time access to reliable, secure, high-quality, actionable data to inform critical decisions to improve instruction, reduce opportunity gaps, and improve communication and connection at all levels across the system, especially with students and families.

Mission: Our mission is to empower educators, enable personalized learning, and help reduce the opportunity gap by empowering districts to build out their data infrastructure and increase their access to, use of, and communication through, actionable data. We do this with an enterprise grade suite of tools using best practices in data integration, interoperability standards, visualization, and capacity building to provide educators, students, and their families with the critical information they need when they need it.

Our Values:

Partnership Driven. Our profound commitment to our partner districts drives everything we do. The schools and districts we serve aren’t just our customers but our partners, and we are committed to working hand-in-hand with them to truly understand their problems and provide dedicated quality support to help them achieve their goals. 

Lifelong Learning. Learning is part of our DNA. Every day we wake up ready to grow and learn new things. It’s why we do what we do - because we believe in the power of learning and education. Our team of educators, engineers, change-makers, and innovators fundamentally enjoy the process of questioning, digging, exploring, and coming up with new and better solutions for the organization, our partners, and our world. 

Servant Leadership. Everything we do is to help empower schools and districts. We aim to build data systems to empower the schools and districts we work with through capacity building and leveraging expertise for our partner’s long-term sustainability and success. Ultimately, we believe in the power of “learning to fish” and building a district's capacity and ownership over its data is what we’re all about.

DEI and Belonging. As an organization, we are dedicated to leading, working, and living in alignment with our commitment to DEI and creating systems of belonging that support equity in education and the workplace. Through our mission to empower educators and reduce the opportunity gap, we are committed to increasing access to and democratizing data so that educators, students, and their families can be effective advocates and decision-makers for success. 

Openness and Transparency. We believe that through transparent pricing and our commitment to access and open data standards, our partners can make informed decisions without slogging through time-intensive sales pitches. They can feel confident that their investment with us will continue to serve them into the future

Mindy Frisbee serves as the Interim CEO for Converge and is responsible for leading the go-to-market, product, funding, and partnership strategy for the company. Mindy is a strategic leader with over 15 years of experience building and fostering high-performing teams, leading large-scale product initiatives, and producing high-impact results through partnerships and system-level solutions. In her previous role at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), most recently serving as Chief Research and Development Officer, Mindy led the organization’s large-scale systems initiatives focused on key issues of interoperability and privacy in K12 education and led research and product development initiatives focused on addressing core needs of K12 schools and districts in the U.S.. Prior to ISTE, she served as senior research faculty at the University of Oregon where she led a national research agenda focused on developing and testing math edtech products. Mindy has a Masters in Educational Measurement, Policy and Leadership, a Bachelors in Ethnic Studies from the University of Oregon.

The Converge/Landing Zone team is an interdisciplinary team of software developers, former teachers, data analysts, researchers, product leaders, and enterprise architects. In addition to leadership, Converge is made up of two teams: the development team and the customer success team. 

In order to support this project the CEO and our lead customer success team member will share the responsibility for execution of this project. Ensuring that Converge and our Landing Zone solution are built on a foundation of rigorous research is of the utmost importance to the future success so completing this project will be top priority. 

In addition, because of Converge’s unique relationship to parent organization InnovateEDU, we also are able to leverage support from the InnovateEDU research team for additional research, design, and implementation subject matter expertise and support throughout the phases of this project.

Landing Zone integrates data across apps and solutions, providing secure managed data infrastructure and capacity-building services for schools and districts.

Over the past decade, schools and districts have seen a significant increase in digital tools and resources use, with an average of over 1400 different applications being used in districts each month.  Tools often manage one aspect of instruction: assessment, curriculum, or student feedback, while other silos are built for student information and operation.  These silos rarely connect the data in a way that allows educators and families to understand the whole picture.

With this growing number of new tools also comes an influx of data that can be difficult to manage, time-consuming to understand, and can lead to increased privacy and security risks as they try to stitch the various data points together to get an accurate and holistic picture of each student’s progress.  

Without widespread interoperability, districts that strive to empower their educators with meaningful data for decision-making either have to pay high fees to build and maintain custom integrations, or resort to manual approaches to downloading and analyzing their data that are time-consuming and introduce considerable security and privacy risks. Data practitioners know this problem very well, living in it day-in and day-out. However, teachers and school administrators are also now feeling the effects of this more than ever as they see the value of viewing operational data, such as student attendance, side by side with student performance data. 

At Converge, through our Landing Zone product, our goal is to minimize this burden by setting up and managing a robust data infrastructure allowing their data to come together in ways that empower educators with the information they need when they need it.

At Converge, through our Landing Zone product, our goal is to minimize the burden on districts by setting up and managing a robust data infrastructure.  This infrastructure brings their data together in ways that empower their educators with the information they need when they need it.  Specifically, we provide partner districts with

1. Affordable cloud-based managed data infrastructure. We believe that education organizations are best positioned to impact their community when they can leverage a robust and secure data infrastructure. However, it is often far more costly to hire an engineer (or team of engineers) to build infrastructure and data processing pipelines than it is to have our team implement and maintain an infrastructure that has proven successful in so many organizations across the country. Our team builds 100% of the infrastructure districts need within a district’s own Google Cloud account utilizing Ed-Fi ODS / API Platform, Apache Airflow, and Google BigQuery to ensure that their data team and educators can focus on what matters most, using the information they have to make critical decisions. We then link this data to dash-boarding so customers are successful on day one of implementation.

1. Fully integrated data. At Landing Zone, we integrate data from over 35 different sources including the top Student Information Systems (SIS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), and assessment and learning apps used by districts. Bringing data together from across these systems allows educators at all levels within a district to better understand what’s happening across the district and to get a more accurate and holistic picture of students’ progress, gaps, and potential needs.  

2. Ongoing support and capacity building. We believe that in addition to having a robust data infrastructure, it’s also critical to be able to build the human capacity and expertise to ensure districts can continue to leverage their data in new ways for improving teaching and learning in the future. With Landing Zone, we help partner districts grow their internal capacity and expertise in three ways. First, our customer success teams are available through our service desk to help with any questions or needs that come up as districts work with their data. Second, Landing Zone also provides partner districts with custom coaching and professional learning options with weekly coaching sessions, learning resources, and community discussions. Landing Zone districts also get access to a community slack channel and information sharing for continued learning and peer support. Finally, Landing Zone provides partner districts with a library of customizable open-source dashboards allowing districts to get started right away using, learning from, and communicating through their data. 

Ultimately, our goal is to empower districts and their educators with actionable data by having affordable access to a robust and secure data infrastructure with ongoing support and resources for sustainability and long-term impact.

Making data-driven decisions to ensure that our solution meets the needs of and is effective for our users, is a key component to the long-term success and growth of Landing Zone. To help inform both our customer success and product roadmap, the Landing Zone implements formative research approaches to measure both high-level overall satisfaction as well as to gather detailed use-cases and feature requests critical for enabling the real-time use and implementation of our solutions. 

To do this, the Landing Zone team implements two surveys throughout the year, one occurring mid-year and one at the end of the year. Results from these surveys provide an overarching temperature check on the satisfaction of our customers, the general health and direction of our solution, as well as providing an understanding of current use-cases, areas of growth, and key areas of success for consideration. 

In addition we have conducted foundational literature reviews to inform potential future applications of our solution, and to help us identify areas where we can leverage our unique data infrastructure approach to help districts use data to improve connection and communication with parents and families.

Sample results from our most recent mid-year pulse survey indicate that 100% of current users are either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their Landing Zone experience. We also found that the majority of our current customers are still not yet fully leveraging the dashboard features we offer. As a result we have targeted this as an area for expansion over the next year with a goal of developing three additional dashboards aligned with user needs each quarter over the 2023 calendar year. 

Regarding the foundational literature reviews we have conducted around data driven parent engagement, we found that research supports our hypothesis that data can be a valuable tool for supporting better parent-teacher communication. Specifically, providing teachers and parents with information about their child's progress, data can help to improve the quality of education that their child receives. For example, research indicates that data can help teachers understand each student's needs and challenges. By tracking student progress over time, teachers can identify struggling students and provide them with the support they need. This can help to prevent students from falling behind and can also help to improve their academic achievement. Second, data can help parents to understand their child's progress in school. By sharing data with parents, teachers can help them to see how their child is doing in different subjects and areas of development. This can help parents to be more involved in their child's education and can also help them to support their child at home. Third, data can help teachers and parents to communicate more effectively with each other. Teachers and parents can have more informed conversations about their child's progress by sharing data. This can help to build trust and understanding between the two groups and can also help to improve the quality of education that their child receives.

We will use these initial supportive findings to guide our future product strategy and resources development priorities to better support district use of data as part of their parent/family engagement strategies.

Currently we work with over 22 schools and districts across the U.S. invested in modernizing their data infrastructure to improve learning outcomes and empower administrators, teachers, and students with better data-driven decision making. Many of these districts serve under-resourced communities with high percentages of students of color and students who are traditionally from marginalized communities. Currently, 90% of our Landing Zone districts are within economically challenged communities and serve a majority of students of color. We prioritize working with districts that serve these communities not only because of the unique value that our services can provide, but also because it core to our mission centered in equity and social justice through ensuring access for all.  This work is  aligned with our unique ability to provide an affordable, transparent option for schools and districts to help them modernize their data systems, build internal capacity in ways that will continue to sustain the institution and its educators and their communities. It is because of our fundamental belief that every school and district should have the opportunity to advance its mission through data-driven decision-making, that it is critical for us to invest in strengthening the research base around our solution in order to be able to reach and serve more districts who might benefit from our services. By strengthening the evidence base around our work we will be able to help more districts advocate for their data infrastructure needs and demonstrate clear outcomes to help make the case for investments needed to support this critical area of need.

We would like to focus on the following three research questions as part of the LEAP project:

1. What are the major challenges facing districts when it comes to effective data usage and needs

2. What are the major benefits that our solutions help districts solve when it comes to their data needs? 

3. To what extent does having access to integrated data via the Landing Zone solution help districts save time, improve effective data use, and facilitate informed decision making?

As outputs for this project we would desire the following:

• Literature review(s) summarizing relevant research around the following topics:

  • General district realities when it comes to district data usage

  • Gaps in the field around district access to integrated/interoperable data 

  • Potential equity outcomes from districts using integrated data more effectively. 

  • The benefits of having a robust data infrastructure on key variables such as staff time savings, and other quantifiable benefits

• Detailed research plan(s), tactics, strategies and project plan for answering the following research question: 

  • To what extent does having access to integrated data via the Landing Zone solution help districts save time, improve effective data use, and facilitate informed decision making at the district level?

• Research and evaluation tools such as surveys, interview protocols and methodologies that can be used to use collect data aligned to the research project plan 

• 2-5 case studies highlighting the key problems being solved by our solution for our partner districts

We will put these outputs into action in the following ways:

• We will prepare and publish case studies focused on the top challenges we are solving for our partner districts highlighting the real-world value and impact of our solution

• We will use literature review results to publish articles, blog posts, and other informational materials that showcase the foundation of research supporting the theory and potential for impact of our solution

• We will implement specific research initiatives based on the recommendations and project plan 

• We will produce and publish academic articles resulting from the research project

• We will use evidence gathered from the research studies and resulting publications as a foundation for seeking government and foundation funding 

• We will use case studies and other informational materials that are produced to communicate with prospective partner districts, increase viability, awareness, and credibility around our solution, and advance related thought leadership around critical issues of data infrastructure and interoperability across the K12 field

Our overarching goal is to advance the field’s understanding of the critical need that districts have when it comes to their data and to support long-term focus and prioritization from the field in providing resources to help K12 schools and districts have access to reliable, safe, secure, and actionable data. Over the past decade, schools and districts have seen a significant increase in digital tools and resources use, with an average of over 1400 different applications being used in districts each month.  Tools often manage one aspect of instruction: assessment, curriculum, or student feedback, while other silos are built for student information and operation.  These silos rarely connect the data in a way that allows educators and families to understand the whole picture. With this growing number of new tools also comes an influx of data that can be difficult to manage, time-consuming to understand, and can lead to increased privacy and security risks as they try to stitch the various data points together to get an accurate and holistic picture of each student’s progress.  At Converge, through our Landing Zone product, our goal is to minimize this burden and improve data culture and practice at the systems level by enabling districts with robust data infrastructure allowing their data to come together in ways that empower educators with the information they need when they need it.