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Education

Kickboard Raises $2 Million in Series A Funding Led By New Markets Venture Partners and Two Sigma Ventures

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Funding Will Support Expansion of the Kickboard Team and Investment in Further Product Development

New Orleans, LA, February 27, 2013 – Kickboard, a web-based school analytics platform that allows educators and school leaders to capture, analyze and securely share critical student performance data, announced today that it has received $2 million in Series A funding led by New Markets Venture Partners and Two Sigma Ventures, with participation from several angel investors. The new round adds to $800,000 from previous seed and angel rounds, bringing the total amount raised to $2.8 million.

“Today’s announcement signals the start of an exciting period of growth for Kickboard,” said Jennifer Medbery, founder and CEO of Kickboard. “With this funding we plan to expand our team and invest in further product development, particularly enhanced dashboards that offer new ways to visualize student performance, including shared information from other tools teachers and school leaders use. In a performance-based culture, it is imperative that teachers, students and families have greater visibility into all elements of student performance so that they can take informed, decisive action and improve student outcomes.”

Kickboard enables schools to complement the deficiencies of their student information system by going beyond the gradebook to develop richer profiles of student progress that include multiple assessments, standards mastery, 21st century skills, reading growth and, most uniquely, student behavior, character strengths and personal interests. The platform’s dashboards provide real-time visibility into student performance in and across classrooms so that teachers have the information they need to make meaningful adjustments to instruction and interventions. With Kickboard, schools are able to improve data-driven teaching, increase collaboration among educators, better facilitate family communication and advance a culture of performance school-wide.

“We believe the answers to K-12 quality, innovation and scaled efficacy are born in authentic data at the classroom and, moreover, end user levels,” said Elizabeth Chou of New Markets Venture Partners. “Kickboard has created a unique and powerful platform that makes it possible for teachers and school leaders to easily and efficiently collect, analyze and act on student behavior and academic data. We recognize the wide-reaching and positive impact Kickboard can have on students’ lives and we look forward to helping the company expand and grow.”

Currently more than 200 schools nationwide have implemented Kickboard school-wide to support their performance-based culture and increase alignment, consistency and real-time visibility of student performance information. Additionally, due to demand from teachers requesting to use Kickboard in their classroom without waiting for school-wide adoption, Kickboard recently began offering free starter accounts to individual educators and teams of up to three teachers per school. The Kickboard starter accounts include most of the same features and functionality as the enterprise platform, allowing teacher leaders to use student data to advance a culture of performance in their school directly by fostering a more transparent, collaborative, growth-minded and results-driven environment in their classrooms.

“In many industries, thoughtful, user-conscious analytics and visualization of data can be incredibly powerful,” said Colin Beirne of Two Sigma Ventures. “Kickboard puts actionable real-time data at the fingertips of teachers and school administrators to better enable them to fine-tune their instruction and management, and ultimately better fulfill their school’s mission.  As strong believers in the power of data to drive insight and results, Two Sigma Ventures is proud to support Kickboard’s efforts to build strong, healthy schools where teachers and students thrive.”

For more information about Kickboard, visit www.kickboardforteachers.com.

About Kickboard
Kickboard is a web-based school analytics platform that allows educators and school leaders to capture, analyze and securely share critical student performance data. The platform’s features include simple yet powerful dashboards that increase the real-time visibility of student performance across classrooms, traditional and standards-based grading, one-click behavior data capture, easy to read charts and graphs and immediate performance reporting, including customizable report cards. With Kickboard, schools are able to improve data-driven teaching, increase collaboration among educators, better facilitate family communication and advance a culture of performance school-wide. Delivered as an on-demand solution, Kickboard can be easily integrated with a school’s SIS, and deployed in a single classroom or across an entire district. For more information, visit kickboardforteachers.com.

About New Markets Venture Partners
New Markets Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in and actively assists innovative education, information technology and business services companies. The New Markets Team has decades of experience investing in and building high growth companies, maintains proprietary relationships with centers of innovation and has particular domain expertise around technology and education. It prides itself on working to add value before, during and after the investment process. Visit newmarketsvp.com for more information.

About Two Sigma Ventures
Two Sigma Ventures is a division of Two Sigma Investments, a leading technology company that applies a rigorous, scientific method-based approach to investment management. Since its founding in 2001, Two Sigma Investments’ vision has been to develop technological innovations that intelligently analyze the world’s data to consistently deliver value for its clients.
 
Two Sigma Ventures invests the proprietary capital of Two Sigma in innovative companies that harness technology, computing, mathematics or data to tackle problems in a new way. The firm invests in companies in various stages of growth and across a wide variety of industry segments, with a focus on companies that utilize technologies and competencies in which Two Sigma has expertise and that can potentially benefit from the firm’s deep expertise in research and technology.  For more information please visit www.twosigmaventures.com and www.twosigma.com. 

Contact:
Lindsey Read
CSG PR
3225 East 2nd Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
937 408 9321
lread@csg-pr.com
http://www.csg-pr.com

Education

Kickboard Launches Webinar Series Featuring Presenters From Achievement First, Democracy Prep & KIPP

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Under the Theme “Igniting a Gradebook Revolution,” the Sessions Discuss Ways Schools Can Use Data to Establish or Enhance a Performance-Driven Culture

New Orleans, LA, July 30, 2012 – Kickboard, a holistic student data tracking platform that goes beyond the gradebook and enables teachers to collect, analyze and share mission-critical data, announced today that it is launching an exclusive, free webinar series, “Igniting a Gradebook Revolution,” beginning August 8th. Registrations are currently being accepted for the first two sessions in the series: Setting the Right Expectations and Analyzing the Right Data to Create Consistent Classroom Culture on August 8, featuring presenters from Achievement First and Democracy Prep, and Building a Performance-Driven Culture From Day One of the New School Year with KIPP New Orleans on August 15th. Both webinars are from 1:00-2:00 pm EDT.

“Traditional gradebooks aren’t cutting it. They don’t capture, track and report student behavior, as well as academic achievement, as part of student performance,” said Jennifer Medbery, founder and CEO of Kickboard. “However, many schools are now transforming the gradebook into a centralized hub of student performance to infuse a data-driven approach into both teaching and learning, as well as to build a strong classroom culture. This webinar series discusses the challenges, successes and best practices of schools where the gradebook has become a powerful schoolwide collaboration platform for ensuring student success.”

Attendees will gain actionable insights into ways their peers are using data to support student success and achievement and advance a performance-driven culture, while facilitating collaboration between teachers, administrators and parents. There are first steps any school can take today to expand the view of student achievement beyond grades and instead measure whole student performance, as well as strategies and tools that can help them turn that data into a plan of action.

School leaders, administrators and teachers interested in learning more about how they can use data to establish or enhance a performance-driven culture should register to attend the following webinars:

Wednesday, August 8, 2012 at 1pm EDT

Setting the Right Expectations and Analyzing the Right Data to Create Consistent Classroom Culture

Chris Bostock, Dean, Achievement First Amistad High School
Seth Andrew, Founder and Superintendant, Democracy Prep Public Schools
Chiv Heng, Senior Director of Knowledge Management, Democracy Prep Public Schools

During the webinar, participants will:
* Gain actionable strategies to set schoolwide norms and secure teacher buy-in

* Learn how to enhance or establish a behavior/character/PBIS program that uses data to ensure consistency across classrooms

* Discover the ways peer schools are leveraging the gradebook to implement their programs and track and analyze data, share information about student behavior and create reports

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 at 1pm EDT
Building a Performance-Driven Culture From Day One of the New School Year

Brenna Benson, Director of Data and Analytics, KIPP New Orleans
Todd Purvis, Chief Academic Officer, KIPP New Orleans

During the webinar, participants will:
* Explore what can be done starting today to build a robust data and performance-driven culture and how data can improve instruction and outcomes

* Review key questions to discuss with staff when incorporating Common Core and standards-based assessment into a traditional grading system

* Learn how to use the gradebook as a hub of student performance to align day-to-day activities to schoolwide, end-of-year goals

For more information or to register, visit www.kickboardforteachers.com.

About Kickboard
Kickboard is a holistic student data tracking platform that goes beyond the gradebook and enables teachers to collect, analyze and share critical data, including multiple assessments, standards mastery, reading growth and, most uniquely, student behavior and character strengths. The platform is built by educators for educators and offers a simple yet powerful web-based dashboard to increase the real-time visibility of student performance across classrooms. Unlike traditional gradebooks, Kickboard tracks whole student performance and features traditional and standards-based grading, one-click behavior data capture, easy to read charts and graphs and immediate student performance reporting, including customizable, painless report cards. The platform advances a school’s performance-driven culture by setting and measuring school expectations and norms and facilitating collaboration between teachers, administrators and parents. Delivered as an on-demand solution, Kickboard can easily be integrated with a school’s SIS, and deployed in a single classroom or across an entire district. For more information, visit kickboardforteachers.com.

Contact:
Lindsey Read
CSG|PR
3225 East 2nd Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
937-408-9321
lread@csg-pr.com
http://www.csg-pr.com