As students return to class this month, some may find that their education data is handled differently with better academic outcomes in mind. PowerSchool, the provider of a cloud-based software platform for K-12 education, announced the launch of a fully managed data-as-a-service platform in partnership with Snowflake.
The company says its new DaaS, Connected Intelligence by PowerSchool, will provide school districts and educational agencies with a unified, global, fully managed and secure platform based on Snowflake’s cloud architecture. PowerSchool promises that districts using the new solution will retain sole ownership of their data and have the ability to securely collaborate internally and externally.
PowerSchool attests that critical educational data is currently siled, inaccessible, and underutilized, and it created the software with the goal of unifying all school data into one comprehensive platform. The company lists the benefits of doing so by increasing equitable opportunities for all students, spending fewer resources on accessing, storing, and managing data, storing educational data securely in one place, and expanding access to all data, including historical, current, future, and third-party data.
The company says connecting data from infancy to adulthood can improve student outcomes and could be leveraged for post-secondary education and workforce development. In addition, the use of fewer resources for data management, as well as access to data in a single store, opens the door to more efficient and effective use of data, such as analytical capabilities that can alert teachers when students are showing warning signs of falling behind. PowerSchool also notes that secure, cross-agency access to all types of education data can be useful in connecting schools to juvenile justice, foster families and other social services in order to help students identify resources.
“Connected Intelligence by PowerSchool gives state education departments and school systems the ability to transform the economic and social prospects of their communities by bringing all of their data together and providing them with unprecedented ease of access, unparalleled performance and the peace of mind that comes with knowing their data is safe and secure,” said Shivani Stumpf, Group Vice President, New Solutions at PowerSchool. “This innovative and comprehensive data ecosystem that we have developed and built on Snowflake’s Data Cloud, aims to help education leaders make the most effective and efficient use of data with greater agility, and inform their investments so they can focus on what that matters most: improving student achievement and preparing all learners to succeed.
The company expects the platform to help districts and agencies deliver personalized learning and “meet every student where they are” by providing contextual information that enables immediate action, such as recommendations for programs, to support personalized learning.
Snowflake’s education platform architecture promises to help data administrators “say goodbye to resource limitations and latency with the ability to instantly scale up and down a virtually unlimited number of loads.” concurrent work on the same single copy of your data. The company also says its built-in replication and failover/failback features ensure business continuity, while its fully managed data cloud alleviates the management and administration associated with traditional data platforms.
“With the partnership of Snowflake and PowerSchool, educators benefit from a powerful combination of capabilities that enable more data collaboration both internally between school districts and externally with third-party agencies, while providing security and consistent governance,” said Snowflake Global Public Sector Leader Jeff Frazier. “Through the Powered by Snowflake program, PowerSchool not only extended Unified Insights, but also introduced new products like Connected Intelligence that enable school districts and education agencies to mobilize data to improve student outcomes.”
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