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Amanda Klein, Ed.D.Owner and ConsultantI am an educator at heart.
As a former teacher, Community School Coordinator, non-profit community partner, and district-level Family and Community Engagement Specialist, I understand what it’s like to manage a classroom, serve on a leadership team, and support and engage a school community. These experiences inform my work on a daily basis. I have always straddled the line between working directly with students and families and using my love of analysis and writing to highlight trends and improve the impact of organizations. I love using data to illuminate important educational and societal issues and to drive programmatic improvement. Not only do I love to teach and empower others, I love to learn. I went to Johns Hopkins University for my Bachelors and Masters degrees, and I got my doctorate in K-12 Education Leadership and Policy from Vanderbilt University. |
About Structured Solutions
The seeds for Structured Solutions were planted when I developed a fancy spreadsheet.
To better track the attendance patterns and family engagement trends at the community school where I was working, I got creative. I built a series of easy-to-use, pre-formatted spreadsheets that allowed our team to regularly monitor data and collectively enter information about our efforts.
Here's what happened:
We started to see improvement in the attendance rates of our chronically absent students, and we built a strong culture of engagement at our school. My spreadsheets got noticed by peers at other schools, and I began to conduct trainings on my tracking methods.
I realized that many of my colleagues had never had an opportunity to really learn about data – how to collect it, what to use it for, and frankly, how to even interpret it. Despite systemic mandates for schools and organizations to become entirely data-driven, no one had helped educators and staff build capacity in this area beyond reviewing test score data.
Structured Solutions began out of the idea that there are cost-efficient and simple ways to track and use data in schools that can transform our work and provide more targeted and effective supports to students and families. Even more importantly, every member of a school community is capable of doing this work.
Since 2015, I have worked with schools, districts, and non-profit organizations across the country to tell their story by building their team’s capacity in collecting and using data, establishing a culture of data, and effectively measuring their impact.
To better track the attendance patterns and family engagement trends at the community school where I was working, I got creative. I built a series of easy-to-use, pre-formatted spreadsheets that allowed our team to regularly monitor data and collectively enter information about our efforts.
Here's what happened:
We started to see improvement in the attendance rates of our chronically absent students, and we built a strong culture of engagement at our school. My spreadsheets got noticed by peers at other schools, and I began to conduct trainings on my tracking methods.
I realized that many of my colleagues had never had an opportunity to really learn about data – how to collect it, what to use it for, and frankly, how to even interpret it. Despite systemic mandates for schools and organizations to become entirely data-driven, no one had helped educators and staff build capacity in this area beyond reviewing test score data.
Structured Solutions began out of the idea that there are cost-efficient and simple ways to track and use data in schools that can transform our work and provide more targeted and effective supports to students and families. Even more importantly, every member of a school community is capable of doing this work.
Since 2015, I have worked with schools, districts, and non-profit organizations across the country to tell their story by building their team’s capacity in collecting and using data, establishing a culture of data, and effectively measuring their impact.
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If your team is struggling to manage and use data about the students and families you serve, let's chat.
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