From insights to action: Using data to drive student success
Meet Dr. Pam Long, Head of Lower School at Ranney School. With 26 years of experience in education, Dr. Long has spent half her career in public schools and the other half in private schools. When she arrived at Ranney School, she found the perfect place to continue her mission: supporting faculty so they can inspire a love of learning in students.
“Ranney was the fit I was looking for—great people, great faculty, great head of school. It’s been a great joy.”
Dr. Long’s leadership philosophy revolves around ensuring that faculty are empowered to focus on what they do best—teaching and supporting students.
“If they’re finding joy in what they do, finding joy in their students, students feel that they have someone in their corner to help them love learning. That’s the impact that I hope to make.”
Using August, Dr. Long and her team have been able to track and analyze critical student health and behavior data.
“August has given us one place to put so much rich, important data…We can look at what’s trending over the course of the year. Are we busier when we come back from winter break? Is it because school just started? Are kids nervous? Is there anxiety?”
This ability to track patterns has allowed Ranney’s team to not only respond to incidents but also proactively address their root causes.
For Dr. Long, one of the most valuable aspects of August is its ability to help her and her team uncover the underlying causes of student challenges.
“We have a student who went through significant trauma three years ago and frequently visits the health office…Being able to look at the data, our Counselor could tell that something was triggering that. We looked at the time of day and were able to link it to an academic piece. All of that to say, she was able to be proactive and right before that time of day, she just had a quick two minute check-in [with the student] and the trips to the health office were much less frequent.”
The August platform has also allowed Dr. Long to identify patterns in behavior that might have otherwise been missed. Last year, she noticed a spike in encounters among the 4th grade. She organized a town hall where they could openly discuss what was going on and figure out how to work together to improve behavior. Data from August makes Dr. Long feel like she always has an ear to the ground.
“Students knowing I have a pulse on [their behavior] makes them think, ‘let’s do a little better’ and ‘how can we do this as a group?’ Those are some of the really powerful ways we’ve used the analytics.”
This ability to dig into the data, rather than just address surface-level issues, has made a profound impact on how Ranney’s leadership approaches both student health and behavior. August allows the Ranney team to get to the root cause of a behavioral issue instead of just putting a bandaid on the problem.
In addition to supporting individual students, the data Dr. Long gathers through August has empowered her to advocate for additional resources, such as nursing staff. In making a case for adding either a full-time or part-time nurse to the staff, Dr. Long noted that,
“it was great to be able to give my CFO and my head of school the data to show how many cases [nurses] have, what’s been chronic, what’s been a big boo boo, all of those things broken out has been fantastic.”
Dr. Long’s ability to leverage data has strengthened her credibility with Ranney’s senior leadership.
“Before [August], it was, ‘I think we should do this,’ but my CFO—he’s a numbers guy—wants to see the hard data. August has been very well received by senior leadership.”
With clear, actionable insights from August, Dr. Long now has the concrete evidence needed to advocate for additional resources, ensuring both her students and faculty receive the support they need to thrive.
Another benefit Dr. Long has seen with August is the ease of communication and collaboration between faculty and staff.
“Being able to put any interaction, whether it’s with a student or a parent into August and tagging my Assistant Head of School, or even if there’s someone on the Student Support team I need to tag has been fantastic. Before we used to put things into a Google Form, then you had to open a spreadsheet and then it’s font size 2.”
Dr. Long had no way of knowing when there was an update on a student situation.
“Now with August, ‘if something happens and I’m out for a week, I can go in and see where the conversation picked up. I can see the history of what has happened.’”
This streamlined approach extends to student support meetings as well. Now before meetings, the team will review the student’s encounters in August so everyone is on the same page.
“When we go to sit down with a teacher during a student support meeting, we have a snapshot. Those meetings are only 30 minutes long. We’re not sitting there trying to get historical data on this child, we already have it. That has helped us have really rich conversations on how to support the teacher and be able to use those 30 minutes a lot more effectively.”
As Ranney School continues to use the August platform, Dr. Long aims to empower her faculty to fully leverage the data at their disposal.
“One of the things that I’m focused on this year is teaching the faculty how to really dive into data, asking themselves, ‘what does the data show?’”
By equipping her staff with the skills to analyze and interpret data, Dr. Long aims to foster a culture of informed, proactive decision-making across the school.
Her goal is to make sure that data-driven insights aren’t just for leadership but something every team in the school can use to spot patterns, solve problems, and better support their students.
“We love August, it’s been a game changer for us.”