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Tom Lang

Tom Lang has spent more than 3 decades in the field of journalism and marketing, while always having a hand in public education. His father was a school teacher, his mom a school secretary, and his wife teaches high school English and Humanities. On his own, Tom worked his way through college as a school bus driver and today remains closely tied to education as a Board member of FIRST (Robotics) in Michigan. He has worked with high school coaches and athletes for nearly 30 years as a freelance sports writer at the Detroit Free Press, and for more than 10 years as a basketball referee. Bottom line -- help kids grow, learn and create productive futures.

Recent Posts

2 min read

Data Validation Streamlines Data Reporting for Cicero Public Schools

By Tom Lang on April 18, 2023 at 11:36 AM

Tish Brandt still thinks back in some disbelief at how cumbersome and time consuming the old way of reporting school data to the state was for her team at Cicero (IL) Public Schools.

“There we so many different layers of complication there,” Brandt said about the former process, before technology advances made it easier and more accurate.

The layers have been virtually eliminated since Cicero began working in 2021 with Level Data and its IT plug in of seamless and smooth reporting with the State Data Validation Suite (SDVS) – a software plug-in for users of PowerSchool.

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2 min read

Data-Driven Decisions Come to Life for Cicero Schools

By Tom Lang on April 18, 2023 at 11:34 AM

School districts nationwide can now get real-time information in less than five minutes for more than two dozen categories ranging from attendance to gradebook analysis to truancy to lunch status to family lists and demographics, to discipline to mapping addresses for busing and tracking district demographic changes, to name a few.

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2 min read

Enabling Districts to Move from On-Premise Domain Controllers to Azure Cloud Storage

By Tom Lang on April 18, 2023 at 11:26 AM

As funding for school districts nationwide continues to get tighter, IT directors are seeking more solutions for managing user accounts.

Level Data, LLC in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is the first to offer school districts nationwide a direct to Microsoft Azure user account management service, eliminating the recurring expenses and maintenance costs of on-premises domain controllers.

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2 min read

Level Data’s SWIS Connector Cuts Work in Half for Danville Public Schools

By Tom Lang on February 16, 2023 at 1:00 PM

With staff shortages and schools recovering from the chaos of the past few pandemic years, any savings of time by not duplicating efforts, especially when improved data accuracy comes with it, is certainly a welcoming sight.

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3 min read

Provincial Reporting (PASI) Success in Alberta: Student Data Quality and Unlimited Contacts

By Tom Lang on February 13, 2023 at 1:40 PM

Like all educators know, 2 + 2 = 4.

And like Technology, Learning, and Innovation Director, Jesse Sadlowski and Tina Carnegie,
Administrative Assistant and Tech Support know, clean and accurate student data = clean and accurate government reporting.

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2 min read

How to Generate In-District Enrollment Status Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on October 3, 2022 at 10:00 AM

Accessing Student Data is a key element of any SIS. But taking that data and analyzing it typically requires exporting out of the system and manipulating it within some other external tool. One area that can be tricky, especially if no specific field is used, is identifying if a student resides in or out of the district. However, with the use of Level Data’s In-District Enrollment Status Report, users can now easily identify in-district versus out-of-district students with the click of a button.

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6 min read

How to Create a School Population Planning Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on September 30, 2022 at 10:00 AM

Accessing student data is a key element of any SIS, but taking that data and analyzing it typically requires exporting out of the system and manipulating it with some other external tool. This is especially true when attempting to plan based on where your student population actually resides. But what if you could not only see where your students reside on a map but also be able to slice and dice the records by creating your own boundaries? Not only creating them but being able to share those regions with others. Well, with the use of Level Data’s new School Population Planning Report, users can now do just that.

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2 min read

How to Quickly Pull Stored Grades Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on September 28, 2022 at 10:30 AM

Reviewing stored grades for students is a common activity for staff, especially for staff like principals and counselors. While retrieving data for individual students isn't too complicated, getting to the data for larger groups or even getting to a view that is a bit easier to read and that can be filtered based on specific criteria gets a bit more complicated. However, with the use of our Stored Grade Analysis Report, this process just got a whole lot easier.

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2 min read

How to Create Standard Grades Analysis Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on September 25, 2022 at 10:30 AM

Standard grading has become a popular method of tracking a student's achievement. While often used at the elementary level standards-based grading can be found at any level, configuring standards and entering scores is one part of the process, and reporting them is another. While the most common need is for individual student-based reports, schools often want to look at standards through a bigger window. However, generating this type of report is not a simple process. There aren't many built-in reports that can access the records schools need without complicated searches and exporting processes. But with the use of our Standards Grade Analysis Report, accessing standards grades has just gotten easier.

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2 min read

How to Produce a Credit Progress Report in PowerSchool

By Tom Lang on September 23, 2022 at 10:30 AM

Student credit progress is one area that counselors and principals must constantly monitor. While reviewing data for individual students is fairly simple, it still involves either reviewing student records by a student’s historical grade screen, printing transcripts, or searching for and exporting the data out of the stored grades table. In any case, it often still involves manual manipulation of data just to get to the totals for students. Even then, finding out as a group which students are and are not on track can be a difficult and time-consuming process. However, with the use of our Credit Progress Report, that data is just a few clicks away.

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