5280 Magazine
(July 2015)
Seated next to each other in class, Jimmy and Tommy look harmless. But as Mrs. Smith takes attendance on her tablet, a flag alerts her that the boys disrupted class last period. This is just one of the ways educators benefit from Schoolrunner, software developed by Denver’s Charlie Coglianese. The concept is simple: Educators upload data—from quiz grades to behavioral problems—into a cloud-based platform, which then shares the info with all of a student’s teachers. Beyond basic grades, teachers can pinpoint concepts their students are struggling with and adjust lesson plans accordingly. Such data sharing isn’t a new practice, “but somehow it’s still novel in schools,” says Coglianese, who used to develop programs for hedge funds and BlackRock, an investment management corporation in New York City. Launched in the fall of 2012, Schoolrunner now tracks more than 50,000 students in seven states. None of them are in the Centennial State—yet. In March, the Colorado Impact Fund invested $1.5 million in Schoolrunner, allowing the RiNo-based company to expand, potentially to Colorado schools. Jimmy and Tommy: Consider yourselves warned.