RIDGELAND, Miss. , March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — SchoolStatus, a leading provider of K-12 school communications solutions designed to improve student outcomes through data and parent engagement, announced today the acquisition of TeachBoost, a privately-held, education software company that builds tools to support educator observations, evaluations, and coaching.
The acquisition of TeachBoost further accelerates SchoolStatus’ strong momentum and supports its strategy to build a K12 communications and operations ecosystem that leverages the power of its data and engagement platform to drive better user experiences and student outcomes.
Since its founding in 2012, TeachBoost has built simple, user-friendly tools to help educators elevate observation, evaluation, and professional development beyond compliance. Its cloud-based platforms—TeachBoost Pro and TeachBoost Coach—enable schools and districts to create more meaningful interactions among teachers, coaches, and administrators, and to drive smarter, data-driven decisions about the best way to develop educators. TeachBoost’s platforms can be customized to meet the needs of schools, districts, and organizations of any size and across any workflow. Its robust reporting and data visualization tools help make the best use of limited time and resources to make sure every student experiences the highest quality instruction.
“The addition of TeachBoost enables SchoolStatus to offer our district partners a leading solution for every step of the K12 teacher development process, from evaluation and compliance to personalized coaching that drives educator growth,” said Russ Davis, CEO and founder of SchoolStatus. “It’s an excellent complement to our leading data and communications platform, as it will help strengthen communications between educators, administrators, and coaches, ultimately leading to greater student success.”
“At a time when teachers and kids need more support than ever before, we need to make sure educators have the tools to leverage every interaction as an opportunity for growth,” says Jason DeRoner, TeachBoost’s CEO and co-founder. “Stronger teacher–leader relationships lead to increased greater educator capacity, which in turn drives student achievement. The combined forces of TeachBoost and SchoolStatus will help teachers and leaders establish and deepen critical relationships based on mutual trust and transparency.”
About SchoolStatus
SchoolStatus is a leading provider of a K12 communications and operations ecosystem that leverages the power of its data analytics and engagement platform to drive better user experiences and student outcomes. SchoolStatus removes technology, language, and access barriers to parent engagement, and has successfully facilitated hundreds of millions of messages between educators and student families through its platform. SchoolStatus, along with its recent acquisitions of the Operoo and TeachBoost, gives educators across 44 states access to the leading solutions for insights and data to support strategic decision-making. For more information, visit schoolstatus.com.
Podcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
5 tips to increase parent engagement
Parent-school relationships have always been a vital part of student success, but the importance of establishing and maintaining meaningful parent engagement was emphasized by the pandemic.
When schools moved to remote instruction, communication between parents and educators soared. Teachers and administrators worked with students’ families to try to establish stability and continuity. Priorities such as setting up remote learning structures, developing a distance curriculum, and offering social and emotional support required increased collaboration with home.
Parents have become used to increased information and communication from schools. …Read More
7 strategies to get teacher buy-in for new technology tools
Parent engagement is a driving factor behind any child’s success in school—but a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 teachers found that parents are often disengaged in their child’s learning journey. To harness edtech tools that can help school-home communication, it’s essential to first secure teacher buy-in.
More than half of the teachers surveyed believe parents do not understand the importance of their involvement in their child’s school experience, and they assume education is a teacher’s job–not a collaborative effort between parents and teachers.
As the district technology integrationist in a rural Title 1 district, I continually look for affordable and/or free edtech resources that will bridge the communication gap between teachers and parents. But those resources also require teacher buy-in.…Read More
SchoolStatus Acquires Operoo; Accelerates Vision to Build World’s Leading Unified K-12 Analytics, Communications, and Workflow Platform
RIDGELAND, Miss., Oct. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — SchoolStatus, a leading provider of an education communications platform designed to improve student outcomes through data and parent engagement, announced today the acquisition of Operoo, a privately-held, Australia-based company that provides one of the most widely-used cloud-based solutions for online school forms, medical data, and trip management.
SchoolStatus will acquire Operoo in its entirety, fully incorporating Operoo’s operations, technology, and team into SchoolStatus, including 27 employees and over a thousand customers in Australia, Europe, and North America. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Operoo enables thousands of schools, clubs, and associations around the world to automate, manage, and track operational tasks from a single cloud-based platform. The company offers digital workflows for a range of routine processes – which are often manual, disconnected and paper-based – including distributing and collecting parental consent, payments, medical and emergency information, student registration, staff onboarding, policy management, incident reporting, activity and group management, paperless school trips, and more. …Read More
3 tips to cultivate meaningful parent engagement
With the onset of COVID-19, parents have stepped-up and continued to play an active role in their children’s daily education activities. Teachers, schools, and districts have put their best foot forward to ensure students are learning but still struggle with meaningful parent engagement, which has proven critical to a child’s ongoing success in the classroom.
The best school communities know the importance of giving parents a voice and a seat at the table. Here are three simple ways you can get parents more involved and start cultivating meaningful parent engagement.
1. Shift towards two-way communication…Read More
ClassTag Launches ClassTag Connect Parent Engagement Platform
ClassTag, the leading parent-teacher communication platform, today announced the introduction of ClassTag Connect, an all-in-one engagement platform that provides robust data-driven insights to facilitate greater parent, teacher, and administrator involvement and insights from classroom to district. Over 25,000 schools and several districts, including South-Western City School District, Phoenix Talent School District, and Salado Independent School District are currently using ClassTag Connect.
“The COVID pandemic has prompted school districts to recognize the value of a single, cohesive engagement platform that will avoid overwhelming parents with siloed communications. Our platform provides a way for districts and their individual schools to facilitate meaningful, personal, two-way communication between parents, teachers and administrators while simultaneously offering school and districts actionable insights behind parental engagement levels, ensuring that every family is empowered during this challenging time,” said Vlada Lotkina, CEO and Co-Founder of ClassTag.
For example, ClassTag Connect allows schools and districts to send important updates in real time to each parent’s preferred messaging channel, whether that’s via the app, email, SMS, web or paper. The accessibility of ClassTag Connect also extends to families who do not speak English as a first language as well, as the app allows for automatic translation into 60+ languages.…Read More
6 ways to connect with ELL parents
There’s no secret formula for parent engagement. And when English isn’t their first language, the obstacles seem more daunting. Connecting with ELL parents can help educators better support students—and there are some strategies to help.
According to Rick Castaneda, a training specialist at Rosetta Stone, the key is to develop a multi-step approach that gives parents several different opportunities to connect with the school and their children’s teachers while also making sure that the parent, no matter their language, feels like a key part of the decision-making process.
In his edWebinar, “Involve Parents for Greater English Learner Success,” Castaneda discussed six key areas of parental involvement, based on the work of Johns Hopkins professor Joyce L. Epstein, PhD, and how each one helps build a stronger relationship.…Read More
New technologies for schools: September 2012
A new way to measure the color brightness of projectors, a messaging service that could boost parent engagement in their children’s lessons, and math software that targets “perceptual learning” are among the latest ed-tech tools described in the September 2012 edition of eSchool News.
Our September edition is now available in digital format on our website. You can browse the full publication here, or click on any of the headlines below to read these highlights:…Read More
New ed-tech service aims to boost parent engagement
A simple text message could clue in parents to the perfect conversation starters with their kids: The Parent Connection, a new feature of Channel One News InterActiv (C1Ni), sends parents messages about what their children learned in school that day in an effort to strengthen the home-school connection.
C1Ni, an interactive video program that allows teachers to pause a Channel One News broadcast and work through accompanying lessons with students on Promethean ActivBoards, launched a year ago as a collaborative effort between Channel One News and Promethean.…Read More
How to engage parents online more effectively
Parenting is the toughest and most important role most adults will ever have. Yet, far too many feel ill equipped to handle the job. Others are simply too busy making ends meet, or so overwhelmed by life that parenting simply takes a back seat to more pressing concerns.
As someone raised in a “survival of the fittest” family, with few rules, multiple crises, and modest expectations, I can relate to other parents who feel inept when confronted by the litany of things educators expect parents to know and do.…Read More