- NAF, a leading national education nonprofit organization, turned to Tata Consultancy Services’ Tech4HOPE pro bono consulting and services program to help improve educational outcomes.
- The effort leveraged TCS’ expertise in data visualization technology to significantly improve NAF’s interpretation of complex datasets and make them easier to access.
- As a result, NAF has deeper insights into the factors unpinning student potential, enabling them to develop more effective, customized approaches to helping students achieve their potential.
For years, student need in the U.S. has been measured by relative poverty alone and specifically by student eligibility for free and reduced-price lunches, while ignoring other factors. Now, more meaningful and actionable considerations are available through the efforts of NAF, a US nonprofit organization dedicated to student success, through TCS’ Tech4HOPE pro bono services program.
The measure of how many students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches from the federal government has been the way schools qualify for Title I, Part A (Title I) funding since about 2010. Part of the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESEA), Title I provides funding to school districts for children from low-income families. The supplemental funding is meant to close educational achievement gaps and ensure students have fair access to a high-quality education.
Acutely aware that many factors beyond household income and food security are roadblocks to student potential, NAF created the Open Data Index for Schools (ODIS) application. A free, first-of-its-kind open data resource, ODIS provides insights into the variety of community barriers facing more than 23,000 US high schools. The goal of the tool is to improve education and student achievement by overcoming as many barriers to success as possible. With that mandate, NAF turned to TCS and its Tech4HOPE pro bono consulting and services program for support to make data output from ODIS more accessible and understandable.
For the project, TCS Tech4HOPE employee volunteers improved and expanded output from ODIS by creating enhanced data visualizations, resulting in more nuanced snapshots of the challenges facing marginalized communities. More than simply presenting data in charts or graphs, the new data visualizations reveal more detailed and compelling insights about the individuals behind the data. This makes it easier for people of all data skill levels—from beginners to data scientists—to better understand and interact with the information.
NAF is now using these easy-to-decipher visuals to develop more customized approaches to helping students achieve their full potential. TCS Tech4HOPE volunteers also delivered a digital toolkit to help ODIS users more easily extract datasets and interpret them.
“Thanks to TCS, the front-end of our Open Data Index tool will be dramatically enhanced, making visual storytelling and data interpretation more intuitive and impactful, said Dr. Nicholas Minar, Director of Research & Reporting at NAF. “In a world overflowing with data, clear and concise insights are essential for driving place-based philanthropy. We’re excited that TCS helped us take this tool to the next level, empowering stakeholders to make informed decisions that support students and communities.”
NAF brings schools and businesses together to better prepare high school students for college, career, and future success. Among the organization’s strategies are experiential hands-on learning activities that complement career-focused program of study. They are served through NAF academies and are delivered in partnership with the private sector.
“Through our collaboration with NAF, we were able to leverage our expertise by creating tools that significantly enhance the accessibility and understanding of ODIS’ complex datasets,” said Ashvini Saxena, VP and Global Head, TCS Digital Software & Solutions, who served as the NAF project lead. “It’s a great feeling to know that our efforts will improve the lives of students in local US communities by improving their future opportunities for success.”
For more information about Tech4HOPE, contact stefanie.mccall@tcs.com.
About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS)
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS) is a digital transformation and technology partner of choice for industry-leading organizations worldwide. Since its inception in 1968, TCS has upheld the highest standards of innovation, engineering excellence and customer service.
Rooted in the heritage of the Tata Group, TCS is focused on creating long term value for its clients, its investors, its employees, and the community at large. With a highly skilled workforce of 580,000 spread across 55 countries and 202 service delivery centers across the world, the company has been recognized as a top employer in six continents. With the ability to rapidly apply and scale new technologies, the company has built long term partnerships with its clients – helping them emerge as perpetually adaptive enterprises. Many of these relationships have endured into decades and navigated every technology cycle, from mainframes in the 1970s to Artificial Intelligence today.
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