PowerSchool examines national survey results from K-12 educators in this year’s Education Focus Report to unpack the present and future of AI, personalized learning, and usable data.

PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC), the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, has released its key findings from the 2023 Education Focus Report for the 2023-24 school year. The report delivers findings from a national survey of K-12 educators in all 50 states at the school and district levels, as well as in-depth conversations with over 70 academic, technology, data, and talent leaders.

“We are excited to share valuable insights in this report, elevating classroom, school, and district leaders’ voices,” said Ryan Imbriale, former district leader, and Vice President of Education Solutions at PowerSchool. “The future of education starts with listening to educators today. Reflecting on our findings, K-12 education is in a time of tension, caught between the urgent, the important, and the possible.”

Recognizing the current dynamics in education, the 2023 Education Focus Report focuses on four key areas: transforming the student learning experience; supporting educators and instruction; solving for the future with usable data; and partnering with parents and caretakers in student learning. Among the report’s topline findings, there is a collective sense among educators that personalized learning, actionable data, and artificial intelligence (AI) hold promise to shape the future trajectory of education.

“As educators navigate a quickly shifting technology landscape and workforce challenges – as well as the urgent need to improve student learning and wellness in the aftermath of the pandemic – we believe that sharing top challenges and priorities can benefit not only fellow education leaders, but partners in the edtech space to better support schools and ultimately students,” Ryan added. “We’re looking forward to continuing the conversation throughout the 2023-24 school year.”

The report reveals that a majority of educators believe technology helps personalize student learning so they can focus on individual needs and meet learning goals. However, when it comes to artificial intelligence (such as generative AI), there are varied perspectives between district leaders and school-level educators on the potential of AI to enhance teaching and learning. The report showcases current thinking about future use cases of AI, and how teachers and students can benefit.

Key findings include identifying the top priorities for the upcoming school year as providing teachers with actionable data and connecting data across systems. With evolving multi-tiered systems of supports (MTSS) and similar practices, educators often don’t have usable data to understand which tiered interventions are working.

The 2023 Education Focus Report was shaped in partnership with 15 education leaders – representing technology, teaching and learning, data, talent, and more – who comprise PowerSchool’s Education Insights Advisors Group. The report also includes PowerSchool’s top commitments and actions to help make education technology more personalized, simple, easy, and secure.

“With how consistent and available surface level data is (like attendance and grades), it leads many of us to say, ‘yes we have usable data.’ But when we ask ‘why?’ about a dataset, we often find the data doesn’t exist to answer that question, or we have it for some students but not others,” said Chris Cromwell, Instructional Technology Coordinator for West Chester Area Public Schools in Pennsylvania and a member of the PowerSchool Education Insights Advisors Group. “We have a long way to go to address gaps in data and understand connection between inputs and outcomes.”

Additionally, educators see and appreciate the value that tech tools and innovation bring to their classrooms but the practice of rapidly adopting tech tools without fully training those who need to use them can leave educators feeling overwhelmed. The abundance of tech tools affects parents too, with the use of multiple platforms often resulting in a deluge of information for parents, which causes them to feel frustrated and overwhelmed, or even shut off the school "information spigot" entirely.

To learn more about what we’ve heard from educators and what the future holds, visit https://www.powerschool.com/edtech-focus-report-2023/ to download the full report.

About PowerSchool

PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC) is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments, and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 50 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in more than 90 countries. Visit www.powerschool.com to learn more.

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