Metro Nashville Schools, Nashville Promise Neighborhood and Social Solutions Announce Data Sharing Partnership

NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Metro Nashville Schools, the Nashville Promise Neighborhood (NPN), and Social Solutions have partnered to support student success in school and in life.

"The school district struggles to educate students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in large part due to the life circumstances the students experience outside of school," said Laura Hansen, Metro Schools Director of Information Management and Decision Support and co-chair of the NPN Data and Research Committee. "To make gains in student academic achievement, Metro Schools needs the assistance of neighborhood-based programs to build capacity in children and youth to come to school ready to learn. To make a difference in the outcomes for the children and youth they serve, NPN providers need to be informed of the individual needs of each young person so they can target their services and interventions to meet those identified needs."

Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) has developed a world-class data warehouse providing extensive information for teachers, leaders, and support staff to help meet student needs. Collaborating with Social Solutions, and using their industry-leading Efforts-to-Outcomes Extended Integration (ETO-Xi) tools and resources, Nashville will be able to provide "rapid time" student level data to community based providers to identify areas where student and family support services contribute to improved academic outcomes.  "In an environment of scarce resources and critical needs, it is essential that we understand what is working and what is not," said Adrian Bordone, Co-Founder of Social Solutions. "ETO-Xi allows us to move beyond anecdote and conjecture in order to measure the contributions and incremental progress that our partners are having in support of our students.  This intelligence helps us to replicate our best practices and align our investments with the services that most closely correlate with our students' academic achievement." Targeted interventions, informed by actionable, real-time data, is the ultimate goal. MNPS' powerful data warehouse, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education Race to the Top award to Tennessee, helps to support the data integration between school and community providers that has the potential to transform lives in this way. 

This Data Sharing Partnership will use ETO-Xi to share individual, student-level data from the MNPS Data Warehouse with the NPN Data Network. "Creating data sharing partnerships needed to support the targeted, efficient, and effective use of our resources through programs in schools and in neighborhoods is part of our strategy for achieving a Promise Neighborhood in East Nashville," said Robin Veenstra-VanderWeele, Director of the Nashville Promise Neighborhood. "The data partnership with the school district empowers the NPN to effectively link local schools and NPN Partner Organizations to change outcomes for students from kindergarten to college." The Metro Nashville Schools and NPN data sharing partnership helps coordinate efforts as well as identify and address areas of focus in neighborhood schools. "In the same way that our data helps teachers be more effective in the classroom, we expect ETO-Xi to support data-informed decision making with our non-profit and out of school time partners.  Our hope is that the framework we are building for the NPN, funded by a U.S. Department of Education Promise Neighborhood Planning Grant, will serve as the backbone for a broader data sharing community of practice across the MNPS district.  We expect this to be the model that progressive communities around the country will be adopting in years to come.  We are excited to be among the first to put this model in practice," said Hansen.

About Nashville Promise Neighborhood: The Nashville Promise Neighborhood, led by the Martha O'Bryan Center, is a collaborative network of 27 partner organizations that is developing a continuum of programs and supports for individuals and families from cradle to college and career. Working together, this network fosters academic success for all children, excellent public schools, healthy families and vibrant neighborhoods in East Nashville. For more information, please visit www.nashvillepromise.org

About the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools: When the new school year begins Aug. 1, 2013, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools will serve more than 81,000 students with the goal of being the first choice for families in Nashville. The governing body for Metro Schools is the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education, a nine-member elected body. For more information, please visit www.mnps.org.

About Social Solutions: Social Solutions is the leading provider of performance management software for human services agencies. The company's web-based Efforts to Outcomes (ETO™) software measures the impact of transformational relationships and is in use by more than 3,500 organizations.  For more information, please visit http://www.socialsolutions.com/Public-Sector/ETO-XI-Learn-More.aspx

Contact information:
Metro Nashville Schools contacts – Olivia Brown, [email protected] or Joseph Bass, [email protected].
(615) 259-8405

Martha O'Bryan Center contact - Edwin Acevedo – Marketing/PR Manager
[email protected]
(615)254-1791 ext 123

Social Solutions contact: Adrian Bordone, Co-Founder
[email protected]
443.460.3383

SOURCE Social Solutions