In This Issue
• Customer Spotlight: Liberty County Cut Behavorial Screening Time From Weeks to Minutes
• By the Numbers: Where Absenteeism Stands in 2026
• What Standard Education is Working On
• Industry Pulse: AI in Schools Is Getting Serious
• Before You Go — See You at Jekyll Island
Summer is in full swing. School buildings are quiet, teachers are finally sleeping in, and district teams are quietly doing the work that no one outside education knows that happens in June: reviewing year-end data, planning professional development, and figuring out what didn't work so it can work better in the fall.
We're doing our own summer planning too (more on that below). But first, we want to highlight a districtthat didn't have to wait for summer to figure out what was working. Theyalready knew — because they had the data to prove it.
Customer Spotlight: Liberty County Cut Screening Time From Weeks to Hours. Here's What That Changed.
Liberty County School System serves more than 10,000 students across 12 schools in Southeast Georgia. Before Standard Education, administering behavioral screenings meant manual scoring —a process that took roughly three weeks per school, introduced errors, and made early intervention nearly impossible to execute quickly. After implementation, the same work takes about 90 minutes per 10,000 students.
That efficiency gain is why, in the 2025–26 school year, Liberty County is expanding from three schools to five. When a tool makes it possible to identify students who are struggling silently — and get counselors in front of them the same week — districts don't just keep using it. They grow with it.
“It helps us identify students who may be struggling in silence and for us to offer interventions to the student or allows us to identify the students that may not come under our regular datapoints.” — Melaniann Pass, Director of Trauma-Informed Support Services, Liberty County
By the Numbers
More than 40 states have now reported chronic absenteeism data for the 2024–25 school year, and the picture is consistent: rates are improving, but no state has fully returned to pre-pandemic levels. The pandemic-era peak hit nearly 30% nationally in 2021–22— and while most states have made steady year-over-year progress since then, the gains haven’t been enough to get back to baseline. FutureEd is tracking 64active state bills on chronic absenteeism across 22 states this legislative session. The pressure on districts to demonstrate results isn’t letting up.
The through-line across every successful intervention is the same: early identification, backed by real-time attendance data. Districts that can see which students are drifting before the 30-day mark have a fundamentally different set of options than those who find out at report card time.
FutureEd2026 Chronic Absenteeism Legislative Tracker →
What We’re Working On
We’re working on a purpose-built FTE eligibility identifier that crosses your student data against Georgia’s QBE criteria and shows you — before the October count — which students qualify for services they aren’t currently coded to receive, and exactly which funding rule applies to each one.
Here’s the thing about October: by the time the transmission window opens, the decisions are already largely made. Most Georgia districts go back to school the first week of August. That’s roughly eight weeks — and the coding decisions that determine your submission happen in the first weeks of school, when schedules are being built. Districts that find every dollar aren’t scrambling in September. They’re ready when the bell rings.
We’re debuting this at GAEL. If you’ll be at Jekyll Island, come find us in the exhibit hall — we’ll show you exactly where your district stands, category by category.
Want to see everything else we’re building? We publish our roadmap publicly — because transparency is one of our core values.
View our roadmap → standardeducation.com/roadmap
Industry Pulse: AI in Schools Is Getting Serious
More than 32 states now have published AI guidance for K–12 schools, and 2026 looks like the year where implementation finally follows intention. The conversation has moved well past chatbots in classrooms — it’s about AI-powered early warning systems, behavioral pattern recognition, and tools that help administrators act on data faster than any manual process allows. That’s a space we’ve been building in for a while.
Worth a read if you want the bigger picture: eSchool News rounded up 49 edtech predictions for 2026, andK-12 Dive published a solid trends roundup that covers where district leaders are investing attention this year. If you're still wondering how AI fits into your district, reach out to us.
49EdTech Predictions for 2026 → eSchool News
6K-12 Trends to Watch in 2026 → K-12 Dive
Before You Go — See You at Jekyll Island
GAEL 2026 is July 12–15 at the Jekyll Island Convention Center, and we’ll be there. Our theme this year says what we believe: Find every dollar, fund every student. Every student who qualifies for intervention services should generate the funding that makes those services possible. If you’re a Georgia district leader who wants to make sure the students who qualify are actually getting coded — and that the dollars follow — come find us. We’ll have demos, we’ll have swag, and we’ll be asking about your data (in the best way).
Can’t make it to Jekyll Island? Book a demo, and we’ll bring the conversation to you.
Have a good summer.
The Report Card is Standard Education’s monthly newsletter.