Illuminations and Insights

EA's Chief Operating Officer Libby Pier alongside CEO Andrew Rice, attended and presented at SXSW EDU 2025. During the conference, Libby had the opportunity to participate in engaging hands-on workshops, build community with other people within the education technology field, and facilitate a mentoring session about the intersection of EdTech and education research. In this blog, Libby reflections on the five phrases that defined her SXSW EDU experience: Unsexy Tech, Compost Memo, Mentorship, Multidimensional Infrastructure, and Community.

At EA, we’re trying to do more than just “bridge the gap” between research and technology—we’re trying to create a new kind of organization that leverages the strengths of each field to solve the most pressing problems in public education. In our latest blog, CEO Andrew Rice and Chief of Staff Libby Pier share some of the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve worked to build a technology-enabled research organization. They discuss the cultural differences that can cause researchers and technologists to talk past each other, and highlight the commonalities across these fields that when leveraged, can help transform education into a truly information-rich, evidence-driven industry.

Education Analytics is a proud member of the Knowledge Alliance (KA), a fellow non-profit organization focused on improving K-12 public education by advocating for robust education research. Earlier in September, CEO Andrew Rice and Chief of Staff & KA Board Chair Libby Pier attended KA’s Fall Forum, engaging in discussions around improving and investing in the education-to-workforce pipeline. In this blog, Libby Pier highlights our key takeaways from this year’s forum along with discussing her experience working with the KA Board and KA President and CEO Rachel Dinkes.

From March 3 - 7, several Education Analytics’ staff had the opportunity to attend and present at SXSW EDU in Austin, TX. CEO Andrew Rice and EA Board President Richard Bowman (Chief Information and Strategy Officer at Albuquerque Public Schools) presented the session, “Data Interoperability & AI: Veggies Before Dessert.” Also in attendance at SXSW EDU was Development Strategist Ben Dederich, Director of Brand & Communications Marlena Holden, and Chief of Staff Libby Pier. In this blog, the group reflects on their time at SXSW EDU and highlights their key takeaways from the conference.

This year, EA went through the process of becoming certified in SOC2, which verifies that Education Analytics securely manages our partners’ data to protect student privacy and ensure confidentiality. In this blog, we describe the importance of SOC2 compliance in our work, summarize the steps we took during the SOC2 auditing process, and highlight what’s next for EA when it comes to embracing data security best practices.

We have been using interim assessments across the state of South Carolina to monitor learning lag and recovery. Here, we present results from analyses using data from Fall 2021 and suggest data-driven approaches for targeting accelerated learning strategies to the students most in need.