Attendance Funding Calculator
Process
Funding Research
In order for the calculator to yield an estimate that was as accurate as possible to the actual funding per pupil, we began by conducting research on the different funding formulae used state by state and in some instances county by county. With these funding amounts in hand we sketched the journey we wanted the user to take as they estimated the funding they would protect.
Attendance Improvement Estimate
To estimate the improvement in attendance, we used Tableau to analyze publicly available New York City Department of Education attendance data for the entire district and compared the year-over-year changes in attendance against the attendance records of the schools Kinvolved was in partnership with. This
Tools
The landing page was designed in Wordpress and the calculator required two plugins. One to allow the user to select which state their district is in and then redirect the user to that district's customized calculator, and a second which was a calculator plugin that was customized with the state-specific per pupil funding. The states that do not use the Average Daily Attendance method of counting received an average funding amount for this version of the calculator.
Promotion
I created a short video to be deployed on our site, on social media and at Attendance summits and other events to help frame and explain the problem and show how the calculator works.
Result
The calculator used the districts total average daily attendance by number of students, the funding allotment per student in each state and the average increase in ADA (2%) in Kinvolved districts in their first year of implementing KiNVO. We launched the calculator with the ability for districts in the 6 states that use the average daily attendance counting method to use the calculator with their funding pre-populated in the calculator. All other states that used different counting methods and funding methods were able to enter their per-pupil funding to calculate their potential savings.
Together with the Impact Reports, which analyzed the efficacy of the tool used to improve attendance - KiNVO, the calculator made an effective selling tool for the sales team to illustrate how improving attendance in schools and districts not only benefits the students but the districts themselves.
