AI-Driven Dashboards for Middle School Advanced Course Recommendations

Fast Facts

‍District: Baldwin County Schools (AL)

Students: 31,000

Schools in view: 27 elementary schools and 12 middle schools

Grades: Rising 7th and Rising 8th

Eligibility rule: Baldwin’s  criteria is automated in Nexus: recommended when students meet at least two  of three indicators

Data sources used: PowerSchool  (course grades) + Renaissance STAR, IXL, and iReady (assessment scores)

Visualizations: Pie charts, column charts, stacked column charts

Refresh cadence: Nightly updates

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The Old Workflow

Pull course grades from PowerSchool.

• Pull fall and spring assessment scores from all the district’s testing platforms (e.g., IXL, STAR, iReady).
• Manually consolidate data
• Hand-check Baldwin’s ‘2of 3 indicators’ criteria to determine who qualifies.

“We would gather data from  separate platforms... Then we would have to consolidate the list and check  for students who qualified, meeting at least two of the three  indicators/eligibility requirements.”

Nexus user, Baldwin County Schools

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What Changed With Nexus

• Eligibility signals are unified in one view instead of stitched together manually.
• The district’s rule (2 of 3 indicators) is automated and applied consistently at scale.
•  Dashboards make distribution and comparison easy across schools, courses, and grade levels.
• Nightly refresh keeps lists current without rebuilding reports.

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Using“On the Bubble” to Expand Opportunity

In addition to clearly-eligible students, the dashboards surface students who are close to meeting criteria. That creates a clean, actionable list for intentional support.

“It also helps us quickly  identify students who are close to achieving eligibility, and where we can  provide intentional support to these students, fostering access and  opportunity for more students.”

Lauren Lavender, Secondary Supervisor, Baldwin County  Schools

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Courses Included

Rising 7th  grade:

• Advanced Civics/Geography
• Advanced Life Science
• Advanced ELA
• Advanced Math

Rising 8th  grade:

•  Advanced Math
• Advanced Physical Science
• Advanced World History

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Districtwide Collaboration and Equity Monitoring

• Shared visibility across counselors, principals, district leaders, and teachers.
• Faster alignment on placement decisions and fewer “whose spreadsheet is right” debates.
• Clearer monitoring of access patterns by school.

“Having access to this  information across various roles [throughout the district] helps us identify  any discrepancies in access and opportunities for our students and supports  building a collective, data-driven response to findings.”

Nexus user, Baldwin County Schools

“At the district level, [this]  allows our leadership staff to monitor and support equitable access and  increase opportunities for students to participate in honors/advance  courses.”

Nexus user, Baldwin County Schools

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Why It Matters

• Less manual work and faster cycles for advanced course recommendations.
• More consistent, defensible decisions across schools.
• A clear path to support “near-miss”students and increase participation.
• Protects enrollment (and funding): strong advanced pathways keep families in-district and attract others, which preserves/grows ADM (Average Daily Membership), and ADM drives most Alabama state funding.
• Cuts avoidable costs: correct placement reduces remediation, course repeats/credit recovery, and heavier intervention staffing later.