The ASU Helios Decision Center for Educational Excellence is a partnership between Arizona State University and Helios Education Foundation. Started in 2018, Decision Center is a way to bring together the resources of two of the state’s most well-respected institutions, ASU & Helios, towards the goal of improving the state’s education system for all Arizonans. Our charge is to build the infrastructure for a modern, data-based system of decision-making that improves outcomes for students directly and immediately. We do this through our collection of Tools & Visualizations and our Impact Projects.
A Portfolio of Tools & Visualizations
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Identify the problem: Our goal of visualizing the entire education system of Arizona doesn’t have a map to get there, but our strategy works in a series of steps to get there. We start by analyzing our strategy from previous visualizations to inspire the next focus area. With a specific subset in mind, we then seek to identify the scope of the problem that educators are facing, and how a visualization will be part of identifying and implementing solutions to that problem. |
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Gather data: As we develop a holistic picture of what is important to educators, and what information is important to the broader field, we collaborate with our partners to pull together our data sources for a new visualization. Our tools must be reliable and dependable for users, so we shape new data sharing agreements and form partnerships with relevant groups & organizations to make sure we can give as complete context as is possible to the final product. To learn more about our data sources, check out our FAQs here. |
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Pilot & revise with stakeholders: Our Center seeks to be a partner with educators and stakeholders across the state. We invite a group of early users who represent communities and systems across Arizona to see early versions of a new tool or visualization. We invite their rigorous feedback to ensure our tools are useful to the field. With their feedback we revise and improve our initial versions. |
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Learn from the field: Learn from the field: With the scope of a visualization identified, we then focus on developing our expertise in the topic. We speak to educators and stakeholders here in Arizona, as well as consulting experts, research and literature from across the country to inform our understanding of the issue and the development of our tools. |
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Develop visualization prototype: Our tools and visualizations are designed for use in a Decision Theater setting. Our role is to create tools that facilitate understanding and decision-making by users. We believe data is an important part of understanding education, but ultimately education is a person-to-person endeavor. Our visualizations have a narrative structure so they are compelling, informative and useful. For example, our Postsecondary Feedback Report allows users to follow the story of their students’ success after graduating high school. |
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Launch tool publicly: Once we reach a stable version of a new tool or visualization, we plan for a public release. We train our team internally on the facilitation of a new tool, and then we start scheduling initial sessions in the Decision Theater with groups that have expressed early interest in a tool. Simultaneously, we advertise to our user base that a new tool is available, and we can incorporate it into our portfolio for regular use across the state. |
Application through Impact Projects
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Collaboration:Our Impact Projects rely on collaboration with partner organizations. We seek to demonstrate effective partnerships that are driven by improved outcomes for students, while also providing benefits to all partner organizations involved. |
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Illustration: Our Impact Projects serve as models for how to embed data-analysis into decision making. We aim to demonstrate how to marry data analytics into projects that respect the professionalism of educators at all levels. |
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Impact: Ultimately our Impact Projects must be making meaningful differences in the educational outcomes of students who are part of them. Learn more about one of our Impact Projects here. |
Meet the Decision Center Team
Leadership Team
Joe O'Reilly, PhD, Director
Joe came to the Center after 30 years of directing research, assessment and accountability in Arizona's largest school district. He is past vice-president of the American Education Research Association and has been extensively involved in Arizona education issues for many years.
Luke Tate, Managing Director & Professor of Practice, Office of Applied Innovation
Luke and his team leverage emerging scientific, technological, design, and policy innovations to expand access to educational and economic opportunity. Previously, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Mobility on President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council.
Staff & Associates
Dawn Foley, PhD, Research Project Manager and K12 Product Developer/Liaison
Dawn is helping to shape the Decision Center's impact projects and Decision Theater sessions to best serve our partners, especially K-12 schools. With an extensive background in curriculum & instruction as well as in school administration and leadership, Dawn is excited to help Arizona's K12 schools use Decision Center projects and tools to make measurable impacts for students.
Cristi Guevara, PhD, Data Scientist
Cristi is an interdisciplinary applied mathematics researcher with a strong analytical mindset and demonstrated history of successful problem solving, collaborative research, modeling, algorithm developing and machine learning. She currently works on our education & workforce visualization, as well as our CTE research projects.
Rebecca McKay, Data Scientist
Rebecca is a data scientist with the Center and is also the Director of ASSIST, the Arizona State System for Information on Student Transfer, which is part of AZ Transfer. She developed the Postsecondary Feedback Reports and has been instrumental in connecting the PK-12 and college data.
Chris Ozuna, PhD, Strategic Data Project Fellow
Chris is currently a Fellow in the Strategic Data Project at Harvard that is assigned to the Center. He is overseeing the ASU Impact Corps, a group of mentor teachers whose students go on to high rates of success in their disciplines at the state's universities. He is also working on the Postsecondary Feedback Reports, the impacts of COVID, and data visualizations. Earlier in his career Chris was a classroom teacher.
Momoko Rai, Data Scientist
Momoko has has over twenty years experience conducting research and creating innovative projects. She has a background in both public policy and data analytics. Momoko is embedded at the Arizona Department of Education and is well versed in PK-12 data. She has been involved in studies of rigorous course taking, longitudinal course taking, personalized admissions, and prototyping various visualizations and initiatives.
Mary Zhu, Full Stack Developer
Mary joined the Decision Center from ASU’s School of Molecular Sciences, one of the largest academic units in The College of Liberal Arts and Science. She has over 20 years of experience in web/database application development both front-end and back-end. Mary's primary focus here is in collaborating with our data scientists to create data visualization tools. She is excited to contribute her knowledge to the Decision Center's mission of improving educational outcomes for Arizona students.