Illuminations and Insights
We shine a light on our partners, the work we've done across the country, and insights from our team members.
Five Years, Six Networks, and a Foundation for What Came Next
At the start of 2026, Education Analytics (EA) closed out a five-year grant that became one of the most formative chapters in EA’s history. The work — supporting six Networks for School Improvement (NSIs) across California through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — pioneered infrastructure that helped shape many of the products that EA builds today. Services Delivery Lead Brianna Pollari and Senior Technical Program Manager of Data Science Drew McDermott, who were heavily involved in NSI work, describe the challenges and triumphs of building this infrastructure in this blog.
Day in the Life: Q&A with Program Chief of Staff Selina Eadie Dhillon
Get to know our Program Chief of Staff Selina Eadie Dhillon in the latest installment of our "Day in the Life" blog series. In her blog, Selina describes what drew her to work at EA, the skills she's picked up through her journey from data strategist to program operations leader to now, Program Chief of Staff, and the aspects of her new role that excite and challenge her.
Building Shared Data Infrastructure for Public Education: EDU, Databricks, and the Power of Community Code
Enable Data Union (EDU) is now compatible with Databricks. EDU was built on the principle that shared data infrastructure for public education should be open, standards-based, and never locked to a single vendor. When the Tennessee Department of Education told us their environment ran on Microsoft and Databricks — and switching wasn't an option — we saw an opportunity to prove that open, vendor-neutral infrastructure was possible. Thanks to a close collaboration with Tennessee's team, including direct code contributions, EDU now runs on Databricks. One state's contribution becomes a starting point for every agency that comes after them. Technical Lead Manager Rob Little shares the full story in this blog.
Insights from Ed-Tech Leaders from the 2025-26 School Year
This past school year brought a defining question to the forefront of K-12 education: How can we harness the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in ways that are responsible, equitable, and useful to education leaders, students, and their families? We asked five leaders from across Education Analytics to reflect on what they observed working alongside our partners, and what that could mean for the path ahead. In this blog, they share key takeaways from the 2025-26 school year.
Day in the Life: Q&A with Research Analyst II Jeremiah Mackin-Alonzi
Get to know Research Analyst II Jeremiah Mackin-Alonzi in the latest installment of our Day in the Life series. In this blog, Jeremiah describes his day-to-day tasks like running statistical models in R or building roster dashboards, how his attention to detail aids in his code writing, and how he spends his time exploring Madison outside of work.
Three Strategies Ed Tech Communicators Should Make Before the Year Ends
Online and in face-to-face conversations, confusion and uncertainty are swirling around marketing strategy, and the ed tech sector is not immune. Amid anxiety and excitement over the latest wave of AI models, communications practitioners are wondering about two things: what they need to learn themselves and how to best support their organizations with messaging. How can communicators in the ed tech space best position their companies amid the noise? In this blog, Director of Brand & Communications Marlena Holden addresses this question by describing three areas that ed tech communicators should focus on for the rest of the year to build external trust in their company and strengthen their brand.
