Improving Education Systems

Business Challenge

New Visions for Public Schools is a non-profit dedicated to systematic reform of New York City public schools. In their capacity as a Partnership Support Organization (PSO), New Visions is responsible for providing instructional and operational support to a portfolio of 75 schools. In their drive to achieve at least 80% college or career-readiness of high school graduates, New Visions offers a broad range of educational services to develop leaders, teachers and community stakeholders in order to support over 34,000 students.

New Visions is an outside organization contracted by the New York City School District to support schools instructionally. Thus, it is contractually responsible for school performance on student achievement tests without legal supervisory authority over school staff. As such, New Visions targets various components within each school. Through highly specialized departments focusing on different aspects of education, such as Leadership and Teacher development, New Visions attempts to build learning capacity through multiple tactics in a school.

As a growing organization with an increasing number of support services offered, New Visions urgently needed a web-based solution to manage and track initiatives, capturing school and student-level data that would enable New Visions to iteratively modify both strategies and resource allocations across its 75 schools in more real time. Acumen Solutions helped New Visions to achieve this goal, using an innovative adaptation of Salesforce.com to the educational environment and the New Visions operating model.

Previously, New Visions used a case-based approach to serving schools. Various departments within New Visions would work with specific areas in a school. Without an effective means of sharing information, action plans, and status reports between departments, it was difficult for those departments to collaborate and communicate effectively to determine the best approach for each school and to avoid duplicative efforts. With individuals working in silos without high level information sharing, New Visions' management was not able to make informed decisions driven by data. Decisions tended to be based on anecdotes and incomplete factual data. There was thus an urgent need for a means of managing and tracking initiatives, capturing school and student-level data, and sharing organizational best practices.

In order to create this unconventional educational tracking system, the following key areas were addressed:

• Transforming qualitative, subjective data to systematic, structured, quantitative data
• Creating a defined common language across departments

• Removal of duplication of efforts and redundancies in services caused by lack of information sharing
• Isolated, fractured units throughout the organization without a coherent information and communication exchange

• Extremely limited reporting capabilities based on qualitative data; restricting ability to identify trends, key performance indicators, and positive outcomes

Solution

As a non-profit organization with a small IT department, New Visions needed a technology solution that would involve the minimum of custom software development; would have operating costs that scaled with the size of the user base (rather than having a high fixed cost component); and would be supportable on modestly-powered PCs and laptops (in other words, would be web-based rather than thick-client based). After some analysis, it was agreed that the use of Salesforce.com represented the optimum choice. 
Although the activities of New Visions are far removed from commercial sales and customer service, the enterprise data model and work processes of New Visions were found to map quite easily into the SFDC model by simple renaming of roles and functions. 

Acumen Solutions’ mission at New Visions was thus to successfully customize Salesforce.com to adapt it to New Visions’ activities, processes, data, and reporting requirements – starting with the definition of business and functional requirements, proceeding to configuration and implementation of a New Visions instance of Salesforce.com, and concluding with the training of users in effective platform usage. With the correct configuring of Salesforce.com, New Visions would be able to have a 360° view of a school to assure that support services were best aligned to benefit the school.

After Acumen Solutions successfully implemented Salesforce.com for New Visions, the client was able to collectively organize their school and student information including

• school-level data snapshots
• school quality reviews
• school progress reports
• graduation rates
• Regents exam scores
• Grant Information
• Teacher experience data

Track organizational services and initiatives across schools including:

• Workplan Goals through defined strands of methodologies and processes
• Activities from every professional touching a school including school visit dates, notes, next steps, and observations
• Workshops and Professional Development series the school has attended
• School Support Center help desk Cases that a school submits

Report on:

• Ability to target overdue dates or “off track” work activities
• Monitor trends with school and student level data surfacing isolated links and fractures of support
• Determine effective practices and programs based on student achievement data

Technology & Skills

The following technical and business expertise was applied on the project:

• Business and Functional Analysis
• Salesforce.com Configuration and Implementation
• Salesforce.com Training and Support

Return on Investment

From a business model, the critical advantage of their implementation is that Management can now make informed organizational decisions based on reports and dashboards grounded in data. Through the systematic collection of school, student, and organizational activity data, management can firmly see where there are holes, missing links, and poor service offerings and consequently reallocate resources. They are now able to systematically identify challenges in their programs and services and quickly revise and respond to needs of their schools.

From a nonprofit model, New Visions is now more effectively servicing their 34,000 students. Through grounded knowledge of what services are provided, systematic and streamlined approaches, reporting, and identified best practices, New Visions continues to nourish and empower school leaders in realizing their mission: 80% of their graduating high school students are ready for college.