At the end of every summer, school district leaders walk back into their buildings carrying the same question: is what we're doing actually working? Enrollment, attendance, teacher retention, student well-being — most districts already collect all of it. But it’s scattered across systems, making it difficult to turn all that data into insights to act on.
At X4® 2026, leaders from three districts shared how they closed that gap. Each took on a different piece of the same problem: One turned its data into insights their teams could use. One saved leaders hundreds of hours by bringing everything in one place. And one made district progress transparent to the community.
Arlington: fewer dashboards, clearer answers
Arlington Public Schools set out to do more than consolidate its survey data. The goal was to rethink how users interact with data, moving beyond simple reporting to better understand results division-wide or by school, compare groups, analyze between-group differences, and track changes over time.
Ultimately, this helped leaders see patterns, ask better questions, and act on what they were hearing from students, staff, and families.
Kristina Cecere, APS’s Accountability and Strategic Plan Coordinator, worked with CESA6 on the Qualtrics® Experience Management Platform® to consolidate the former seven datasets and dashboards spanning 17 topic areas into three stakeholder-specific dashboards for students, staff, and families in about six weeks.
With the new dashboards, leaders can now filter results by school, demographic group, or topic. By incorporating intersectionality, the dashboards allow them to examine outcomes across multiple demographics at once, such as drilling down to see Hispanic students who are also English Learners and Students with Disabilities, making it easier to spot similarities and differences.
We designed the dashboards around how leaders would use the data, not simply how the data had been reported in the past. That helped turn the climate survey results into a resource for meaningful conversations and informed decision-making.
– Kristina Cecere, Accountability and Strategic Plan Coordinator, Arlington Public Schools.
That visibility helped put student voice at the center of APS’s bullying-prevention work, giving leaders a clearer picture of students’ experiences and where additional support might be needed. The dashboards didn’t make decisions for APS; they gave leaders the information they needed to make them.
Oklahoma City: one student view instead of ten systems
Oklahoma City Public Schools faced a different version of the fragmentation dilemma. In a district of more than 30,000 students, with a high rate of students transferring in and out, the information about a single student lived across more than 10 platforms: assessments, attendance, coursework, graduation progress, language proficiency, survey responses. No one could see it holistically, in one place.
Emily Murphy, Program Evaluator for Planning, Research, and Evaluation, and her team built two connected Qualtrics dashboards. A district view gives state and district KPIs in the aggregate. A student-level view gives principals, counselors, and team leads the detail they need for the students in front of them.
The team built it in collaboration with school staff, starting with a small pilot and revising on the feedback that came back. It now runs across more than 50 school sites and, as Murphy puts it, has put a friendly face on data across the district.
An "On Track for Graduation" calculator flags students slipping on specific requirements and alerts their counselors. Enabling them to step in early and start an intervention while there's still time, rather than find out at year's end.
Pulling all these systems into one monitoring tool has saved district leaders an estimated hundreds of hours, time that goes back into students instead of spreadsheets.
The 'On Track for Graduation' tool acts as a safety net for our 12th graders, flagging missing credits early enough for counselors to step in before it's too late. That's time our team once spent hunting down and interpreting reports, now spent on the interventions that keep students on track.
– Emily Murphy, Program Evaluator, Oklahoma City Public Schools
The same data reaches a superintendent and a counselor in the form each one needs, so the numbers lead to a decision instead of just another report.
Carroll County: telling the district's story in the open
Most district data faces inward. Carroll County Schools, west of Atlanta, decided some of that data should face outward. With 16,000 students across 23 schools, the district built a public facing site so families, staff, and community members can see how the district is performing on the metrics that matter to them.
To make that site work for a general audience, Sabrina Collins, Teacher & Leader Support Services Director, and her team combined three things: plain-language web pages that explain each district goal, live Qualtrics dashboards alongside them showing the actual progress, and filters so a family can narrow the view to their own school or student group.
The site gives the community a clear, honest read on how the district is doing, (through academic, engagement and perception data dashboards), in language anyone can follow.
When a parent can pull up our dashboard and filter down to their own school, they're not just looking at numbers, they're seeing how their community is actually doing. That kind of openness is what builds trust.
– Sabrina Collins, Director of Teacher & Leader Support, Carroll County Schools
A community that can see the numbers and understand their importance is a community that can help move them.
Same instinct, three starting points
These districts began in different places, but their instinct was the same — data only matters when it reaches the people who can act on it.
Districts get results when the leader, the counselor, and the parent at the kitchen table can see the data, understand it, and trust it.
