A university education department realized that using data-driven decisions and aligning research-based interventions with student needs was being favored in getting federal Department of Education grants. They wrote a grant proposal and included Edstar in it to have us create a predictive data analytics system (like EVAAS) and described that it would take us about a month and cost about $5,000. They wrote in their grant that the schools they were going to work with would use this system to identify kids who might be successful in advanced classes.
The Beliefs and Skills of the University Staff
Having Skills for Working With Data: They thought that creating a data analytics system that could be used to make academic predictions was very easy, and low-skilled. It wasn’t worth much and wouldn’t take very long.
Outcome
We knew they wouldn’t get the grant because of how wrong their assumption was. We tried to tell them about EVAAS, and that the schools already have access to it. They said they would rather work with us, and wanted us to get the $5,000 to do this. They thought we could do a better job than SAS. They didn’t get the grant, which was a given.