US Conference of Mayors – Average Daily Attendance Calculator

Welcome US Conference of Mayors
86th Winter Conference Attendees

New Technologies For Improved Student Performance

Welcome Education and Workforce Development Committee Members. Below, as promised in our remarks, is the “Average Daily Attendance Savings Estimate Calculator”™ you are welcome to pass along via this webpage link to your school superintendents and principals.

We’re honored to share a common commitment with committee co-chair Mayor Chris Cabladon of West Sacramento, CA, Mayor Steve Adler of Austin, TX and Superintendent Dr. Paul Cruz of Austin ISD, to accelerate AI-based EdTech innovation for PreK-12th grade that delivers measurable quality of life and academic performance for your cities.

 
 

Average Daily Attendance Savings Estimate Calculator

Hi, I’m Amy Looper, Co-Founder and COO of OneSeventeen Media – At the US Conference of Mayors 86th Winter Conference I delivered remarks along with Doyle Valdez, CEO of Mobility Blueprint, as part of Austin Mayor Steve Adler’s panel to the “Education and Workforce Development Committee: Preparing the Workforce of the Future’s Working Session” on “New Technologies For Student Performance.”

I highlighted how OneSeventeen Media’s reThinkIt! suite of mobile apps is using innovative AI machine-based learning algorithms that learn and adjust over time what each individual student needs to help them make wiser decisions, curb misbehaviors and prevent dropouts.

As a value-add for mayors to pass onto their city’s superintendents, I offered the following calculator which can provide a ball-park estimate of revenues reThinkIt! for 3rd – 12th graders and ThinkingApp for Prek – 2nd graders could potentially preserve for your school districts.

Additionally, for context, we have provided pdf’s of the panel remarks that can be viewed below:

Read Remarks from Committee Co-chair Chris Cabaldon, Mayor of West Sacramento

Mayor Cabaldon discusses the importance of exploring automation and artificial intelligence (AI) related technologies in the education and workforce development space…

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Read Remarks from Dr. Paul Cruz, Superintendent of Austin ISD

Learn more about how Dr. Paul Cruz and Mayor Steve Adler work together as advocates for the Austin public school system and community…

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Read Remarks from Doyle Valdez, CEO of Mobility Blueprint

Learn more about how Mobility Blueprint addresses socialization and lost instruction time…

 

Read Remarks from Amy Looper, COO OneSeventeen Media

Learn more about how OneSeventeen Media is using innovative technologies, such as AI, to reduce dropouts and increase revenues at schools…

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Average Daily Attendance Savings Estimate Calculator*

Below, enter any number of schools in your district, the average daily cost per student and percentage increase desired to calculate an estimated potential cost savings* your district could potentially retain using reThinkIt! or ThinkingApp to increase your average daily attendance (ADA).

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*Disclaimer

This calculator is meant to provide preliminary estimates for informational purposes only and does not account for specific facts or details that could be present in any particular set of circumstances. We do not guaranty in any way the cost savings reflected by this calculator.

“What Mayor Adler and Superintendent Cruz are doing in Austin in the technology space is linked to a variety of initiatives…best practices for us to learn from. A shared commitment to leveraging education technology and innovations has increased quality of life and academic performance in Austin.”

Mayor Chris Cabaldon, West Sacramento, CA

“In Austin, we like to keep things going, keep things moving, keep it innovative, keep a lot of startups…But it is always about trying to solve a problem in a different way…some issues that are systemic and we’re always trying to approach it with the same solution and it isn’t going to work.”

Superintendent Paul Cruz, Austin ISD, Austin, TX

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“As leaders in our own communities, mayors have to get ahead of all issues surrounding automation and AI and related technologies including those in the education and workforce development space.”

Mayor Chris Cabaldon
West Sacramento, CA

 

US Conference of Mayors 86th Winter Conference – Washington, DC
January 25, 2018

“[inaudible] majority of Americans believe that. However, most Americans expect machines will take over everyone else’s job. Eighty percent expect their own jobs and professionals will remain untouched and largely unchanged and continue to exist in their current form for a few years from now.

[inaudible] This presents a public policy conundrum for us. There’s a sense of urgency around adapting workforce systems, education systems and objectives. This doesn’t necessarily match up with the sense of emergency felt in our communities. It’s most likely wishful thinking that 80% will have their jobs unchanged.

As leaders in our own communities, mayors have to get ahead of all issues surrounding automation and AI and related technologies including those in the education and workforce development space.

Tomorrow there’s a taskforce convening that will specifically address automation and AI across the landscape – today our focus is on the education and mayoral response to these initiatives with respect to education and workforce.

First, impacts of automation up to this point have primarily affected blue collar. That’s still the sense in most American’s minds around the challenges. That’s primarily why many people believe their jobs will remain unchanged. But the coming wave of innovation – as it applies to natural language processing and algorithms of pattern matching – affects a much broader range of white collar jobs. Perhaps not the job of the mayor but jobs of [inaudible] that could not be performed at home.

[inaudible] could easily be performed by machines fairly soon. Actually, none of us had thought driving could be performed by anyone but a human being five years ago – but years from now it would be insane to think anyone but a machine could maneuver a 5,000-pound vehicle among pedestrians and bicycles. Pace of change along the entire waterfront of the economy and workforce is what we’re trying to grapple with. We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do about that dimension.

Second, our educational workforce hasn’t been up to the task of preparing us for the work of the future. Our political and economic institutions have been inadequately equipped to handle the hard choices and to fund the innovation and the evolution of our education and industry workforces to be able to address the issues.

Now, mayors are doing a lot about this in a variety of ways. It wasn’t that long ago that the city of Kalamazoo, city of Knoxville launched the College Promise Initiative to change the baseline so every young person in their community would have post-secondary credentials. And they were rapidly followed by mayors around the country. Scrappy mayors inventing more and more comprehensive approaches for workforce development and education in the face of inaction at the state and federal and university levels to accomplish that.

So, today, whether it’s college savings initiatives or College Promise programs in LA, Richmond, SF, Nashville, Chicago, Oakland, Boston, Seattle and dozens and dozens more and many more every day, in many cases mayors are leading the charge every day in terms of fundamentally changing the baseline level of education and career readiness and how they’re being delivered in our communities. But we’re doing those one at a time and without a sense of how that will relate to automation and AI of the full economy.

And, we have thought in American society and our workforce often thought that more education is the answer as though education is a widget. There’s more and more research in the K12 and post-secondary sector that shows that ... more and more education is not leading to giving folks the ability to break into the middle class, particularly among underrepresented groups. In the economy of today, simply adding more years of education is not enough to change the ability for folks to break out of poverty, break out of homelessness and break into the middle class.

Our universities - [inaudible] large universities with individual universities aside - are more replicating situations of inequality than they are of expanding [inaudible]. So, we have some significant challenges in the education and workforce space.

Third, how do we adapt to the coming changes by inventing entirely new forms of work. It’s important [inaudible] by curating, unleashing, making positive changes [inaudible] changing dimensions of work, work implications...so that at least mayors and cities can at least be as adaptive as Postmates and other services, and we think more carefully about how we enable while still protecting the rights of workers and public spaces in our communities.

Finally, if technology can free us from day-to-day drudgery it allows us to define what work is, what it’s about. Allows us to unleash even more positive [inaudible]. We’re not going to get to that today. That’ll be a new taskforce. But it is important for us to think about also some of the opportunities of some of these changes. It will give us the opportunity to redefine our relationship with employment itself by returning to a focus on small scale production. Giving people more time to spend on leisure. We’ll hear from Postmates, [inaudible] and others increasing a sense of what we might call assisted living for the elderly 20 years ago, it’s now a basic day-to-day service. [inaudible] a change in the services we provide to one another and the expectations that we have from the economy.

So, we will be touching on all of these issues in our brief session this morning and hopefully leave with some best practices, some food-for-thought as we head back to our cities [inaudible].

Let’s begin with our first presentation. Living in a 21st Century global economy requires a quality education and work smarter to ensure that we are keeping pace and nobody is left behind. Technology in education is one of the key ways that mayors are doing that.

So, I’m excited to invite our first discussion led by the Superintendent of the Austin Independent School District, Dr. Paul Cruz. He’s been brought here and then abandoned by Mayor Steve Adler. Dropped into a swarm of mayors.

What Mayor Adler and Supt. Cruz are doing in Austin in the technology space is linked to a variety of initiatives around inequality, affordability, around community preservation, around gentrification, around a whole suite of positive methods they’ve shared is an important best practice for us to learn from. A shared commitment to leveraging education technology and innovations has increased quality of life and academic performance.

Austin ISD serves 82,000 students/12,000 employees. Under his leadership, the graduation rate is at an all-time high outperforming Texas and the nation with 2/3 of their graduates heading to college.”

 

“It’s great to have a mayor who’s an advocate for the public school system, who understands Austin and understands that as Austin changes the Austin school district will also change…”

Dr. Paul Cruz
Austin ISD, Austin, TX

 

US Conference of Mayors 86th Winter Conference – Washington, DC
January 25, 2018

“It is a little intimidating with all the mayors here and so forth. Something I’ve learned. I started as a teacher and now I’m the Superintendent in Austin. I’ve been in Austin for over 11 years now. I’m always learning something. And I call Mayor Adler, I just call him Mayor but I also didn’t know everyone else in the US calls you Mayor. I was having breakfast this morning and someone said, “Hey, Mayor” and everyone turned. That’s amazing. I’m going to try that just for kicks later on too to see how many people turn around and I can say “hi” to. They’ll wonder “Who is he? I don’t even know who he is.”

You know, it really is, it’s been a great partnership in Austin. I’ve worked in different cities, different areas, but Mayor Adler is such a strong advocate for our public school system.

It’s really nice as the Superintendent of a large urban school system – we’re the 6th largest school district in the state of Texas – over 1,200 school districts in Texas. And it’s great to have a mayor who’s an advocate for the public school system, who understand Austin and understands that as Austin changes the Austin school district will also change through changing demographics, gentrification, just everything that’s involved in big city issues is very much a part of the school system.

So, working with Mayor Adler has been wonderful even, as we went around the room, it actually does get cold in Texas and we do talk about weather days. I know that’s one of the worst thing ever for a Superintendent to consider because it’s under what’s the city going to think if we shut down or delay certain or whatever like that. But even when hit with some of those issues, talking with our mayor about what’s going to be best for our community, about safety, education, and just employability, they’re so important. So, I thank all of you for taking an interest in this to then see those connections with the school district because these jobs are amazing jobs, amazing opportunities that we have but we have to work together because there is so much involved in this type of work.

In Austin, we like to keep things going, keep things moving, keep it innovative, keep a lot of startups. We keep it a little bit weird in Austin and that’s part of our thing. But it is always about trying to solve a problem in a different way which is very necessary when we’re dealing with some issues that are systemic and we’re always trying to approach it with the same solution and it isn’t going to work.

But coming together through the era of technology, thinking of things in a very different way, through innovation, but let it also emerge from the community. The same issues that you deal with as a mayor your Superintendents are dealing with that too. Your community members, your constituency, your teachers. So, when communities come together and they say “here’s an issue”, let’s try to problem solve together.

And, of course, all these issues are going to be pretty challenging. But it is powerful when the solutions come from the constituency, the parents, the community members, the advocates of the city. We all love our cities and we all want to make them better. So, in Austin, even with our successes, our graduation rate, our push to get more kids into post-secondary studies after high school, with the different programs that we have in our school system, many, many successes, I’m really, really proud of that. And our kids do extremely well.

But I also know that some schools and some students have many, many challenges. And families have many challenges. And we need to address it even if it’s outside of what I can even do as a language arts teacher, it is outside of what I can do in my classroom, it still impacts my classroom. It impacts student learning. Issues around affordability, around homelessness. In Austin, there’s about 2,000 homeless students at any point in time throughout the year.

We have in and out migration. So, while we have a little under 83,000 students, we have 10,000 students who are with us one year but not the next. We don’t lose 10,000 but that’s the in and out migration within a year. What’s also true, and this as a teacher, the kids you have on the first day or school are more than likely to not be the kids you have on the last day of school.

There’s so much in and out migration in schools and urban school systems. So, when we look at these issues from a point of loss of learning time but kids who miss school and have to move around, we have mobility rates of 20-25%, it’s also an issue for us economically. For every percentage we don’t meet in attendance, in the way we’re funded by the state, that’s more than a $4M loss for us.

That also means lost learning time. Lost socialization time when students have to move and miss a week of instruction and move to another school and have to figure out how to socialize again and then pick up their learning. There’s also the issue of loss of funds for our school system to make sure we’re educating all of our kids. A multiplicity of effects, but when we come together for solutions, it makes it so much more powerful.

So, we have two big issues that connect with the topic for today. One’s around mobility and that’s Mobility Blueprint. And then another issue with the way students communicate. Very different from the way I communicated in school, perhaps many of us communicated in school. Very different today. It’s about meeting those challenges. Trying to get kids to express their emotions and feelings so it can be productive and doesn’t go into punitive consequences. And that’s around reThinkIt!

But first we’re going to hear about Mobility Blueprint and that’s from Doyle Valdez. And, actually, Doyle is a former school board president. 12 years? We capped it at 9 years so it’s got to count more than what you really did. So, Doyle I’ll turn this over to you.

 

“Making kids better people, helps our communities thrive because at the end of the day – every child is at-risk no matter where they come from and they all need advice with life and the people around them.”

Amy Looper, COO, OneSeventeen Media
Austin, TX

 

US Conference of Mayors 86th Winter Conference – Washington, DC
January 25, 2018

Hi good morning to you all! I’m Amy Looper Co-Founder/COO of OneSeventeen Media.

At OneSeventeen Media, we’ve built a suite of mobile apps for PreK - 12th grade that are smart enough to:

  • Help students make wiser decisions – on the fly;
  • Preserve valuable teaching in the classroom time; and,
  • Save schools money.

The product reThinkIt! is:

  • One part real-time texting with a certified mentor/counselor and
  • One part student self-paced–self-help social emotional learning and restorative justice-based interactive content with on-screen video mentors

The core problems we solve are:

  • Discipline and dropout problems costing schools and communities
  • Valuable resources both in human and financial capital

The way we’re innovating technology to help schools solve these problems is by:

  • Using AI-machine-based learning algorithms that learn and adjust over time what’s going on with a student’s heart and head allowing us to:
  • Predict and address in real-time, what each individual child specifically needs to improve on to make wiser decisions and to curb misbehaviors and,
  • We’ve integrated Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Restorative Justice-based content delivered on mobile devices that they already love and know how to use efficiently

For example: Over 2 million students in 15 states have benefitted from reThinkIt! content:

  • Over the years we’ve prevented a potential school shooting in Houston ISD.
  • We’ve kept a drop-out gang leader in school and he graduated.
  • Police, Child Protective Services, Foster Care Juvenile Justice Alternative Ed Programs have used our products –
  • Any city/government that cares for middle school students, our most recent research proves we can get 5 times more information about what’s going on specifically for that child which allows for a much better intervention and outcome for all.

Our third party evidence-based research has –

  • Shown statistically significant reduction in student’s emotional distress
  • Proven to reduce ISS by as much as 50%
  • Gathered 5 times more information from students than shared face to face with adult authority figures
  • Documented students selecting 5.4 emotions to describe how they’re feeling at the time of an incident and,
  • Specifically, in one Houston Middle School alone, we reduced their Alternative School transfer rates by 77%
  • Resulting in preserving over $100,000 over a 9 month period according their very over-joyed principal!

As a takeaway for your school superintendents I’m happy to share with you a private link to our Average Daily Attendance Estimate Calculator –

  • Drop me your business card and I’ll email you our ADA Savings Estimate Calculator link that you can pass along to your school superintendents. Using their attendance numbers, they can quickly estimate the potential cost savings to their districts.
  • For example here’s a district administrator’s back-of-the-napkin discussion where he noodled out where if his school of 1,700 students only increased their ADA by 1% they would preserve $138k. That’s serious money for schools that can help everyone’s tight budgets.

In closing: Making kids better people, helps our communities thrive because at the end of the day –

  • Every child is at-risk no matter where they come from; and,
  • They all need advice with life and the people around them.

Thank you!