Stop Drowning Teachers in Data: Making School Data Useful Again - TEC98

Stop Drowning Teachers in Data: Making School Data Useful Again - TEC98

From The TechEd Clubhouse by Dan Thomas

June 1, 2026 · 41 min · Season 4 · Episode 98

About this episode

The episode discusses how to make school data more useful for teachers by focusing on simple, human-centered data rather than overwhelming compliance data.

In this episode of The Tech Ed Clubhouse , I sit down with Jessica and Janelle from Symplifyed to talk about something every educator knows too well: data. Not the kind of data that gets buried in binders, spreadsheets, board reports, or compliance meetings — but the kind of simple, daily, human-centered data that actually helps teachers make better decisions for students. Jessica and Janelle share how their work with Symplifyed grew out of real classroom frustration: teachers being asked to collect data, analyze data, report data, and act on data — often with tools and systems that make the work more complicated instead of more useful. We talk about how data does not have to mean another test, another spreadsheet, or another meeting. Sometimes data is a quick note on a napkin. Sometimes it is an exit ticket sorted into three piles. Sometimes it is tracking whether one small support strategy is actually helping one student succeed. At the heart of this conversation is a simple but powerful idea: Teachers have always collected data. We just haven’t always called it that. We discuss: Why schools often overcomplicate data The difference between compliance data and classroom-useful…

People in this episode

Host: Dan Thomas

Guests: Jessica, Janelle

Topics covered

  • data in education
  • teacher decision making
  • classroom data
  • tiny data
  • supporting students
  • AI in education

Keywords

  • education
  • data
  • teachers
  • classroom
  • AI
  • IEPs
  • ADHD
  • autism
  • tiny data

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Symplifyed

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