The key to schools’ success? California startup says ask the students.

As school districts across the Bay Area and California struggle with ballooning budget deficits declining enrollment and lagging math and reading scores one California startup says they have the key to success aspirant feedback Parsec Learning a K- evidence analytics company based in Fresno is working with school districts county offices of training and charter schools across California to help schools understand and use content to avoid school closures and help students succeed in the classroom Babatunde Ilori chief executive officer of Parsec Instruction spoke with this news organization about how the company gathers feedback from students to help school districts make change Q What does Parsec Training do A School systems tend to collect a lot of material but we don t know what to do with that figures So one of the things we do at Parsec Schooling really well is help make meaning of the large amounts of input that school systems are collecting When I say facts I m not talking about just solely quantitative content Majority of people when they think about figures insights and content dashboards in school systems they re thinking about state test scores chronic absenteeism novice grades But when we talk about information at Parsec we re talking about a broader set of information which includes qualitative content The qualitative facts is critical to improve these outcomes And we ve been seeing a lot of success with our school system partners We serve close to of the state of California right now so that is about partners across the state And about of our partners are charter schools Q How does Parsec Teaching help schools use information to create change A One of the examples I like giving is one of the school systems we work with had pretty low results and outcomes for African American students They were reading at the lowest literacy levels out of any candidate group in this system And on top of that these students were chronically absent at the highest rate and then they were suspended at the highest rate One out of every five kids who are black in that school system were suspended one or more times It s pretty alarming especially when you compare it to only about of all students across that school system were being suspended but then of black students were being suspended So one of the things we demanded was why is it that African American students in this system are being suspended at a much higher rate than all the other scholar groups So what we did was sit down and talk directly to the students And when we did this what we discovered was that African American students basically mentioned There s nothing here for us We do not feel a sense of belonging in the school No one knows my name I don t see myself in the curriculum or the content being taught I don t feel like the rules are being applied fairly to me And these were all things that could be changed by adults without spending a lot of money It was just caring for the kids getting to build a relationship with them Long story short this school system cut in half the suspension rate for African American students within about a year from when this was discovered And that s when we created Parsec Real to allow us to do this more easily and scale it so we can get way more voices more economically than spending hours and hours of time sitting down in empathy interviews with each group of students Q What is Parsec Real and how does it differ from a typical trainee survey A Parsec Real is a platform application that we created because we saw that school systems tend to do surveys with a Google form or SurveyMonkey but it doesn t tell you what accounts for the results of the survey Parsec Real is not a survey It s really about capturing that raw unfiltered feedback from students from educators from parents to understand what accounts for the results in your school system It s a utility tool that is browser-based where you share your feedback using your voice video audio or text When you can share your voice and just talk it s a different form of communication You re just sharing fluidly so we get much richer feedback In the example I was giving with the African American students we urged the same exact questions to African American students as with other attendee groups and exposed very strikingly different feedback So when we commented Tell me about how you enjoy going to school what s your favorite thing about school what s an area for improvement at school those types of questions are open-ended questions Q At a time when school budgets are tight and information are limited how is Parsec Training helping schools use statistics to prevent school closures A I m going to focus on charter schools because charters are in a uniquely challenging situation right now because there s a lot of rule that charters have to adhere to And they have to get renewals as well If they hit certain statistics points on the state s accountability system they could be in jeopardy of foreclosure So one of the things we do is help charter schools share facts in a way that s very easy for anyone to understand What we re seeing with the charter systems that we re working with is that the students that stick with that charter system tend to grow exponentially and they do really really well The challenge is that the California dashboard which is the state s accountability system doesn t necessarily show that It shows a snapshot of the statistics and that s it There s also declining enrollment that is happening across the state as well and one of the things we ve been doing is helping our school system partners humanize their material by sharing why students enjoy coming to their schools to promote and area their school so that people understand what s great about going to their schools When you are able to very clearly communicate how kids in your school system are feeling and you can communicate what a great engaging climate your school system has it makes it easier for parents to make that decision to enroll their children We re big on elevating candidate voices It s a very challenging setting right now and I think it s critical to elevate attendee voices because it does impact their ability to learn and their feeling of belonging Name Babatunde Ilori Position Chief Executive Officer of Parsec Schooling former Executive Director of Accountability and Communications at Madera Unified School District and former Chief of Staff at Fresno Unified School District Mentoring Bachelor of Arts in computer information systems from Azusa Pacific University and Master of Business Administration from Washington University in St Louis Residence Fresno Five things about Babatunde Ilori He was born in New York City but moved with his family shortly thereafter to Nigeria where he lived until he was years old He attended nine different schools across the United States up until he graduated high school He s a huge soccer fan and played for his college club at Azusa Pacific His favorite association is Manchester United He has two daughters and one son and coaches his children s soccer teams When he graduated from Azusa Pacific he needed to be a educator but ended up working as a business analyst He got his master s degree in educational leadership through a Broad residency now part of Yale University s School of Management and located his way back to schooling