How Freedom Preparatory Academy Uses Student Data to Guide Support
Freedom Preparatory Academy has changed considerably since Academic Dean Kim Flewallen joined the Utah charter school in 2008. What began as a small K–5 school has grown into a K–12 network serving roughly 2,150 students across four campuses, including an online academy.
As Freedom grew, educators continued to use teacher observations, assessments, parent teacher conferences, attendance records, and other qualitative and quantitative information to identify students who needed support. The challenge was bringing that information together efficiently. In 2022, Freedom began using Panorama Education to make student information easier to review across its campuses and to support its existing intervention processes.
- Challenges
- Student data at Freedom was spread out across multiple platforms and spreadsheets without central integration.
- Interventions were haphazard and inconsistent, and support depended on educators noticing patterns or raising concerns, causing many students to fall through the cracks.
- As the charter network grew, educators no longer knew every student by name and couldn’t depend on their gut feelings to indicate when students needed support.
- Growing multilingual learner (MLL) and economically disadvantaged populations needed targeted support, particularly in math and reading.
- Resuls
- Within one school year, measured from fall to spring, Freedom saw a 6 percentile point gain in math for grades 6-12 and an 8 percentile point gain in reading for grades 3-5.
- After a slow rollout of Panorama, adoption for the new tool grew from 50% to 99% of staff, later becoming standard practice.
- With improved identification and tracking in Panorama, MLL students in Freedom were able to exit out of services earlier and had improved English proficiency scores.
Bringing student information together
Freedom had established ways to identify students and provide interventions, but relevant information was spread across different systems and documents. “We were trying to gather data from individual teachers—lots of different points of data that were just not cohesive,” Flewallen said.
At weekly student support meetings, counselors, administrators, and other staff drew on information from teachers, assessments, attendance records, and conversations with families. Gathering those details from separate places took time that could otherwise be spent discussing students’ needs and reviewing their progress.
Attendance information presented a similar challenge. Staff had access to the data, but spreadsheets could be difficult to filter when they wanted to examine patterns over a longer period. Freedom wanted a more practical way to see those patterns alongside the other information its educators already used.
Supporting decisions and follow-through
Freedom piloted Panorama in 2022 and gradually expanded its use. Staff now use it to bring together student information and document support plans in a shared system.
“Those meetings now aren’t focused on gathering data. We have the data. It’s all in one place,” Flewallen said. “Now we can talk about students, their intervention plans, and the progress on those plans.”
Panorama’s attendance view has also made patterns easier to examine over time. Staff can use what they see there alongside teacher input and conversations with students and families when deciding whether additional support is needed.
Freedom introduced the platform gradually, giving educators time to learn how it fit into their work. Staff use grew from roughly 50% to about 99% as Panorama became part of the school’s regular processes.
Academic progress and continuing priorities
Over the past three years, Freedom has focused primarily on improving math instruction and outcomes. From Spring 2023 to Spring 2026, RISE median growth percentile (MGP) for grades 6–8 rose 11 points in math. Math MGP rose 8 points for economically disadvantaged students, 20 points for multilingual learners, and 14.5 points for students with disabilities.
Grades 6–8 science MGP rose 6 points overall during the same period. Science MGP rose 8 points for economically disadvantaged students and 1 point for multilingual learners. Other subjects and student groups did not show comparable growth.
Freedom also saw increases in RISE 6-8 proficiency, a separate measure from MGP. From Spring 2023 to Spring 2026, grades 6–8 proficiency rose 1 percentage point in language arts, 7 points in math, and 6 points in science. Math proficiency rose 12.2 percentage points for economically disadvantaged students and 9.3 points for multilingual learners. Science proficiency rose 10.3 points for economically disadvantaged students and 5.7 points for multilingual learners.
These gains reflect several years of focused work by Freedom’s educators and cannot be attributed solely to Panorama. The platform has, however, made a significant contribution by helping staff identify the specific students and groups who need attention, bring relevant information together, and monitor whether support is reaching them. Those insights have helped Freedom target its improvement efforts, particularly in math over the past three years.
This school year, Freedom is turning more of its attention to literacy. Staff hope to build on what they learned from their math improvement work while continuing to examine where students are growing and where they need more support.
For Flewallen, the value of a shared system is practical: educators can spend less time assembling information and more time discussing students and following through on their plans. Her advice to schools considering a similar approach is to start with one grade level, transition point, or student population, then expand as staff learn what works.
