Previous Award Winners
2025 SDP Data Excellence Award Winner: South Bend Community School System
In 2025, we honored the South Bend Community School Corporation (SBCSC) for their transformative work on data dashboards that empowered school and district staff and increased compliance with the special education protections of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. By bringing together disparate data into a single, user-friendly interface, they were able to reduced administrative burdens for educators and administrators, leading to a 92% improvement in annual IEP compliance over three years.
2024 SDP Data Excellence Award Winner: Madison Area Technical College
Student-parents, one of the student populations least likely to graduate, make up a large portion of college students. Congratulations to Madison Area Technical College (Madison College), winner of the 2024 Strategic Data Excellence Award for their work on The Parenting Student Project through FamilyU. Their creative data collection strategy and focus on removing barriers for this student population will have intergenerational impact on economic mobility for students and their families. Their use of data in this project serves as a model for other agencies and organizations seeking to provide support for student demographics that are often overlooked.
2023 SDP Data Excellence Award Winner: Elk Grove Unified School District
How can a school district know what helps students succeed? Most often, leaders and analysts look at data like test scores, on-time graduation, and attendance rates. While these measures provide important insights about what a district is achieving, they don’t explain why it is achieving at that level. In the absence of knowing the why, districts may be left with educated guessing as the primary means of improvement planning. Congratulations to winner of the 2023 Award for Strategic Data Excellence, the Elk Grove Unified School District. We honor their pioneering and holistic approach to measuring the efficacy of educational programs, not just their outcomes.
2022 SDP Data Excellence Award Winners: Office of Data and Accountability, Boston Public Schools & the Office of Accountability, Research, and Equity at Minneapolis Public Schools
Strategic Data Excellence uses data to tackle or understand a specific, urgent problem faced by the organization. The data strategy is not just an analytic exercise but a project with real impacts on the ground. In other words, the data should change how things are done for the better. Congratulations to the Office of Data and Accountability at Boston Public Schools and the office of Accountability, Research, and Equity at Minneapolis Public Schools! Their teams’ work to meet the urgency of the moment is an inspiration for the SDP network.
2021 SDP Data Excellence Award Winner: Office of Accountability, Research and Planning, Guilford County Schools
This year's nominees were evaluated on actions taken to address the urgency of the moment with fast and accessible insights, the quality of their data-use and design, and the overall impact their work had on teachers, students, school leaders, and community members. Congratulations to Guilford County Schools Office of Accountability, Research, and Planning for your award-winning efforts!