Which of your edtech tools actually improve student outcomes?

ClassLink Insights is a learning analytics product that shows education leaders how edtech usage relates to student outcomes. It pairs the usage data ClassLink collects with your assessment scores and shows how usage relates to score growth. Every analysis uses your district's own students and data.

ClassLink Insights is for K-12 district leaders and state education leaders who need evidence about how edtech usage relates to student outcomes.

• Superintendents: bring local evidence to board, budget, and renewal conversations.
• Technology leaders: see how usage of the tools in your portfolio relates to score growth, without commissioning a study.
• Curriculum, assessment, and research leaders: see how results differ by grade, school, and student group, and where a closer look at implementation could help.
• State education leaders: give districts across your state a consistent way to connect edtech usage to student outcomes, with each district analyzing its own data.

ClassLink Insights compares how much students used an edtech tool with how much their assessment scores grew between two points in time. Insights only requires a minimum of 30 days between assessments, but a full assessment window (such as fall to spring) works best.

It works in three steps:

1. Add assessment scores. Upload scores from two points in time, such as fall and spring, or connect them through OneData.
2. Choose the tools to analyze. Insights pairs the scores with the usage data ClassLink collects for each tool.
3. Read the report. See how usage relates to score growth across your district and by grade, school, and student group.

The analysis accounts for where each student started, the school they attend, and other available student characteristics.

To use ClassLink Insights, an education organization needs scores from the same assessment, for the same students, at two points in time, such as fall and spring. Each record needs a student ID, a score, and a grade level. The assessment subject should match the tool, such as math scores for a math tool.

Insights supplies the rest: usage data from ClassLink Analytics and student characteristics from Roster Server.

A ClassLink Insights report shows how strongly usage of an edtech tool is associated with score growth, labeled as a small, medium, or large effect. The label is based on effect size, which puts results from different assessments on one common scale. The labels are adapted from benchmarks in education research (Kraft, 2020). When the data cannot support an estimate, the report says so instead of assigning a label.

The report also shows:

• The weekly amount of usage associated with the largest estimated gain. Treat it as a guide, not a required amount.
• How many students use the tool, and how consistently.
• How usage differs across schools.

Yes. ClassLink Insights shows district-wide results and can break them out by grade, by school, and by starting achievement level when the assessment data includes it. It can also show results for English learners, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students when your district provides those indicators through Roster Server.

No. ClassLink Insights shows associations, not cause and effect. It compares students who started at a similar level and accounts for their school and other available student characteristics. Factors the analysis cannot see, such as instruction quality and student support, can still play a role. A result shows where to look closer. It is not proof that a tool caused a gain, or that it did not.

Yes. ClassLink Insights uses machine learning, a type of AI, to find patterns in your district's data and estimate how usage relates to score growth. It builds a model on one part of your data, then checks it against records it has not seen. If the model is not accurate enough, Insights does not report results for that tool.

ClassLink Insights works with data your district already sends to ClassLink, under the privacy and access controls already in place. Your district chooses which assessment scores to add and which tools to analyze. Results describe groups of students, and very small groups are not reported separately. Learn more on the ClassLink privacy and security pages.

ClassLink Insights is available now for $2.00 per user/year and includes Analytics+ at no additional cost. Request a demo or quote to get started.