Bento, a new free education data visualization tool created by Kitamba, enables education leaders to explore and respond to educators’ perspectives on a wide range of topics covered by the RAND Corporation’s American Educator Panel surveys, including the sharply varying responses of school districts to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of these nationally representative surveys were previously only accessible in research reports and microlevel data files. Bento lets education practitioners quickly filter the data by characteristics like school demographics and make comparisons between the responses of teachers from schools serving different student populations.
For example, educators and leaders across the country worry that the pandemic could exacerbate existing inequities in the services that under-resourced students receive. After schools closed in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a quarter of teachers said they lacked adequate guidance on how to support the learning of students with disabilities, and a third of all teachers said the same about supporting the learning of homeless students. Bento provides a new way for leaders in U.S. public school systems to listen and respond to concerns like these voiced by teachers around the country.
Bento also lets leaders make comparisons across the responses of teachers and principals to the same questions, and includes demographics and achievement data from thousands of U.S. school districts to help leaders interpret the survey results in context.
“Bento makes it easy for public education leaders to understand and act on teachers’ opinions, and empowers them to explore the data on their own, for free.”
Mark Viehman, Principal & Head of Product, Kitamba
“We’re happy to partner with Kitamba on Bento. It’s a great way to get the data we collected out to the field and make it useful to everyone.”
Dave Grant, Ph.D., Co-Director, RAND American Educator Panels
Bento is available for free. To learn more and sign up, please see: www.getbento.info.
Kitamba
Bento was created by Kitamba, a social impact consulting and products firm dedicated to dramatically improving educational opportunities and outcomes for all children.
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