Empowering Educational Leaders with Data-Driven Insights
Background
Education Analytics is a mission-driven non-profit organization dedicated to conducting research and developing rigorous analytics that support actionable solutions for continuous improvement in American education. Their work focuses on a critical challenge: helping education agencies transform raw data into meaningful insights that directly impact student outcomes.
Traditional data analysis in education often leaves leaders spending valuable time wrangling and organizing data rather than focusing on what matters most—supporting students. Education agencies across the country were struggling with fragmented data systems, making it difficult for state, district, and school leaders to quickly understand their performance metrics and identify areas for improvement.
To address this challenge, Education Analytics needed a robust, scalable platform that could power their suite of reporting and dashboarding products. Their solution needed to be cost-effective, secure, and capable of handling multi-tenant environments while maintaining the organization's commitment to open-source technology and sustainability.
The Solution: Podium
Education Analytics selected Preset as the underlying engine of one of their cornerstone products, Podium — a comprehensive data visualization platform built to empower education leaders with the insights needed for action. This choice was driven by several key factors that aligned perfectly with their organizational values and technical requirements.
As an advocate for open-source technology, Education Analytics was naturally drawn to Apache Superset's open-source foundation. However, Preset's managed cloud offering provided the additional features essential for scaling and securing multi-tenant environments in a cost-effective manner. This combination allowed them to maintain their commitment to open-source principles while gaining enterprise-level capabilities.
Podium currently serves education agency leaders across five states — South Carolina, Texas, Indiana, California, and Wisconsin — with plans for continued expansion. The platform consists of 12 comprehensive dashboards covering critical educational domains including attendance, behavior, grades, and assessments. Each dashboard is designed to help users quickly understand their data and identify actionable next steps.
The technical architecture leverages Preset's full feature set, including multiple workspaces and the Preset API to maintain partner-customized versions of each dashboard in a secure manner. Education Analytics utilizes CSS templating for consistent branding and embeds these dashboards into a custom application that provides users with additional supporting information and navigation features.
The partnership with Preset has enabled Education Analytics to achieve remarkable operational efficiency and user impact. The Preset API has been particularly transformative, allowing the team to activate Podium dashboards within days of starting work with a new site — a capability that ensures timely access for their education partners.
Operational Benefits of Preset:
Rapid Deployment: New partner sites can be activated within days rather than weeks or months
Cost-Effective Scaling: Ability to serve multiple states while maintaining sustainable operational costs
Streamlined Maintenance: Reduced time spent on infrastructure management, allowing more focus on product development and user support
User Impact: The platform empowers education leaders to answer common questions much faster, freeing up valuable time that can be redirected toward directly supporting students. By providing clear, concise dashboards, Podium eliminates the traditional bottleneck of data wrangling and enables leaders to focus on solutions rather than spreadsheets.
Enhanced Accessibility: Education Analytics particularly values Preset's commitment to accessibility improvements, including enhanced screen-reader compatibility. As they note, "Dashboards and reports are valuable only if the folks that need the information can reliably gather it from the platform."
Customer Support Excellence
The support experience has been consistently exceptional, with tickets answered promptly and with obvious expertise. Education Analytics especially appreciates Preset's willingness to prioritize important security features and accessibility improvements, demonstrating a shared commitment to making data accessible to all users.
This partnership approach extends beyond technical support to product development, with Preset actively prioritizing features that matter most to Education Analytics' mission, including SSO setup and critical accessibility enhancements.
Looking Ahead
Education Analytics is particularly excited about upcoming features that will further enhance their users' experience:
Interactive Tables: Already being implemented across all dashboards, this feature gives users more power to dive deeper into data and customize their results, enabling more personalized and actionable insights.
Continued Accessibility Focus: Ongoing improvements to screen-reader compatibility and other accessibility features ensure that all education leaders can effectively use the platform.
Enhanced Theming: Improved customization capabilities that allow for better brand integration and user experience consistency. (Side note: Theming is nearing the finish line, and will be launched soon in Superset 6.0).
As Education Analytics continues to expand Podium to additional states and new data domains and analysis such as predictive analytics and student growth metrics, they're confident in Preset's ability to scale with their growing mission. The platform's combination of open-source flexibility, enterprise-grade security, and cost-effective scaling makes it an ideal foundation for their continued growth in the education analytics space.
Preset's Broader Impact
Education Analytics' success with Preset demonstrates how the right analytics platform can amplify the impact of mission-driven organizations. By choosing a solution that aligns with their values — open-source commitment, sustainability, and accessibility — they've been able to focus on what they do best: creating meaningful change in American education.
Their journey illustrates that effective business intelligence isn't just about the technology; it's about enabling organizations to spend more time on their core mission. For Education Analytics, this means more time focusing on solutions that meet the needs of their partners, and thus, what supports students.
Are you working on solutions that could benefit from embedded analytics? We'd love to explore how Preset can support your mission. Contact us at success@preset.io to start the conversation.
