Fulton County Schools transforms data-driven decision-making by using more than 400 Power BI visualizations to improve student outcomes

In today’s data-driven world, school districts are eager to harness advanced data analytics to personalize student learning, improve instruction, and boost operational efficiency. Fulton County Schools, the fourth-largest school district in the US state of Georgia, wanted to modernize its data gathering for faster analytic insights that could guide decision-making on resource allocation and nurture student performance. The district consolidated its data estate into a data warehouse environment and is using the visualization tools of Microsoft Power BI to present these analytic insights.

Fulton County Schools’ long-standing relationship with Microsoft and its products is helping the district transform decision-making to improve student outcomes. With publicly available data on everything from student performance and engagement to IT device distribution and budget status, the Fulton County Board of Education and district leaders are making decisions more quickly and building trust with the community they serve. 

Consolidating data to inform near-real-time analysis

Fulton County Schools serves just under 90,000 students in more than 100 schools in the Atlanta, Georgia, metropolitan area. The district has a long history of making data-driven decisions to strengthen student outcomes, but its traditional method of gathering and analyzing data was labor-intensive, requiring hundreds of hours from staff to compile an annual balance scorecard on student performance. Data was stored across more than 70 information systems, which hindered the district’s efforts to find and understand new information as the school year progressed.

“We have tried to make data-driven decisions for years, but data is always changing, so our data wasn’t reliable and valid,” says Dr. Mike Looney, Superintendent of Fulton County Schools. “We were making decisions based on historical data.”

Individual schools and administrators had frameworks for analyzing data, but the school district wanted a holistic, near-real-time view to inform resource allocation decisions, address challenges proactively, and optimize operational efficiency. To accomplish this, Fulton County Schools modernized its data collection to generate timely insights for internal and external stakeholders. The district maximized its existing Microsoft licenses and migrated to an end-to-end platform that spans on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, which suited the large district’s complex needs.

Delivering analytic insights with more than 400 visualizations

Fulton County Schools began its transformation by consolidating data in a data warehouse environment, removing disparate data sets and the manual labor previously required for data analysis. Simultaneously, the district set up business standards that would analyze an array of student, teacher, and operational data. 

In 2022, the school district deployed internal dashboards built in Power BI to help instructors, administrators, and the board of education easily see near-real-time information about student performance. Fulton County Schools also wanted to make this type of information available to the public, so it turned to Microsoft for assistance with developing an external site that went live in 2023. “We engaged Microsoft when we were going public with our balanced scorecard to make sure we had the right securities in place and that our data was not vulnerable,” says Dr. Emily Ramsey, Chief Information Officer at Fulton County Schools.

The district used the visualization tools in Power BI to present data in four major categories and 18 subcategories, with more than 400 visualizations for public view. “Our data includes the student performance and engagement information that you would expect from a large school district but also includes operational pieces,” says Dr. Ryan Moore, Executive Director of Strategy and Governance at Fulton County Schools. “We have data on IT device distribution, current projects and their budget status, and how we distribute funds.”

Garnering public trust and support with increased transparency

Fulton County Schools’ efforts to increase data reliability and transparency have created new opportunities for valuable community engagement. Stakeholders ranging from the board of education to parents and teachers are actively using the data to ask informed questions and determine how to improve student outcomes. “It’s much easier to garner support and trust with the public when we’re transparent because we can argue our position with facts and acquire resources to effect change,” says Looney. 

The advanced analytic insights and visualizations also empower the district to identify and resolve challenges proactively while saving hundreds of hours of manual labor annually. Principals and teachers have access to timely data insights driving continuous improvements at the classroom level. “Before, we couldn’t gauge student performance until the summer, but we can now project performance with 95% accuracy,” says Looney. “With that real-time data, we can allocate additional resources to improve performance in the current school year.”

Members of the Fulton County Board of Education appreciate that dynamic data is reliable and helps them to make decisions more quickly and with more confidence. “From the board’s perspective, it took a very long time to make decisions before,” says Kimberly Dove, President of the Fulton County Board of Education. “Now that our data is centralized, we have an easier way to manage it and bring the public along with our decisions.”

Personalizing student learning with data and technology

Fulton County Schools’ data modernization and transparency efforts demonstrate that real-time, actionable data insights can drive improvements in student outcomes and operational efficiency while building trust with the community. Moving forward, Fulton County Schools is already considering how to generate new insights and identify targeted support to help every child succeed. 

With support from Microsoft, Fulton County Schools is excited to keep pushing the boundaries of data-powered possibilities. “Our data can potentially help us shift effort, initiative, and investment to programs that are really working for kids, and that’s very exciting,” says Moore.