Giving Compass' Take:

• Kansas City Public Schools are collaborating with local nonprofits and sharing student data to not only help schools but the community as a whole. 

• As the social sector relies more heavily on tech solutions to measure outcomes, where do donors fit in? How can they support innovative solutions from the start?

• Learn about creating a culture of data for school districts.

If a student’s family gets evicted, her teachers may never know. If a student’s parents initiate a divorce, if someone dies or goes to jail, if a caregiver loses a job – all these things affect a student’s ability to focus on school, get homework done and even show up to class. Yet if students aren’t forthcoming with the information, schools can miss the signs. Teachers may see a child acting out and address the behavior problem without digging deeper. Absences may pile up without anyone figuring out what’s causing them.

In Kansas City, a new citywide partnership aims to improve the capacity of both schools and nonprofits to serve students well. The school district has long shared some of its student data with trusted community partners, but now those data-sharing agreements are getting turbocharged, thanks to new software designed to create a holistic view of individual children by bringing together data and insights from all the organizations that serve them. Kansas City is the first community to try out Apricot 360, a platform developed by the software company Social Solutions and made more affordable by a $59 million commitment from the Ballmer Group, a nonprofit focused on improving economic mobility.

Read the full article about data partnerships helping students by Tara Garcia Mathewson at The Hechinger Report