Ask effective questions with Conversational Data in Solara

Conversational Data in Solara helps you explore patterns across student information without needing to select individual students or classes first. Focused questions can help you compare results, investigate trends, and identify opportunities to support students.

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What makes a useful Conversational Data question

Conversational Data is most helpful when you have something specific you want to investigate, such as differences in assessment performance between schools or relationships between attendance and course grades.

You can make your questions more focused by including four elements:

• Outcome: What do you want to understand? Examples include chronic absenteeism, assessment performance, behavior incidents, or intervention progress.

• Population: Which students or schools should Solara consider? Specify a grade level, school, district, or other accessible population.

• Time period or comparison: What dates or groups matter? Include a school year, assessment administration, or groups you want to compare.

• Analytical action: What should Solara do with the information? Ask it to compare, identify, rank, summarize, or explore a relationship.

For example, a broad question might be:

"How is attendance looking?"

A more focused question would be:

"Compare chronic absenteeism rates across the elementary schools I can access during this school year. Break down the results by grade and show the rates in a table."

You don't need all four elements in every question. Start with the information most relevant to your goal and refine the question as you explore the results.

Example questions to explore

The following examples illustrate how you can use Conversational Data to explore different areas of student information. Replace text in brackets with details relevant to your district.

The results depend on the products your district uses, its integrated data, and your access permissions.

Attendance and grades

Explore how attendance and academic performance relate to one another.

"At [school], which students have missed at least 10% of school days this year and are also earning a C or lower in a core class? Group the results by grade and indicate whether each student has an active attendance intervention."

This type of question can help educators identify students who may benefit from additional review and coordinated support.

Assessment performance

Compare assessment results across schools, grade levels, or administrations.

"Compare fall and winter [reading assessment] results for grades [grade levels] across [schools] during [school year]. Show the changes by school and grade in a table."

For comparisons across time, the relevant assessment results must be available for both periods.

Behavior trends

Look for patterns in behavior incidents over time.

"At [school], how have behavior incident counts changed by month during this school year? Show the results by incident type and identify patterns in a line chart."

Reviewing incident patterns can help school teams determine which areas may benefit from additional discussion or support.

Intervention progress

Understand how students are progressing toward intervention goals.

"Across the schools I can access, how many students have active Tier 2 or Tier 3 reading interventions? What percentage are meeting their recorded goals? Show the counts and percentages by school."

This can help teams review intervention status and identify questions for future progress-monitoring discussions. Results depend on the intervention goals and progress information recorded in Panorama.

Surveys and attendance

Explore potential relationships between student experiences and attendance.

"Across [schools], how does student-reported [survey topic] relate to chronic absenteeism? Compare the most recent available survey results with attendance during [time period] and show both measures in a table."

A relationship between two measures does not establish that one caused the other. Use these findings to guide further investigation.

English learner support

Explore academic patterns for English learners when the necessary data is available.

"Compare [reading assessment] results for English learners and other students across [schools] during [time period]. Show the results by grade and include the number of students assessed."

Reviewing group sizes alongside performance helps you interpret differences more accurately.

Refine your questions with follow-ups

Your first question can be the starting point for a more detailed investigation. Solara can use the conversation to help you narrow your focus, compare different measures, or examine the information behind an initial result.

Useful follow-up questions include:

• "Which schools or grade levels account for the largest differences?"

• "What time period, student population, and definition did you use?"

• "Show the counts and percentages behind each comparison in a table."

• "Which values support your key takeaways?"

• "What information is missing that could affect this conclusion?"

You can also ask Solara to focus on a smaller population or present the available data differently.

Depending on the question, Solara may provide written findings, a data table, or a simple bar or line chart.

Review results before making decisions

Conversational Data helps you explore information, but its responses should be reviewed before informing decisions about students or school programs.

When reviewing a response, consider:

• Scope: Does it include the intended students, schools, and dates?

• Definitions: Are terms such as chronic absenteeism or assessment proficiency being used as expected?

• Numbers: Do the percentages and comparisons in the written explanation match the underlying data?

• Completeness: Does the response identify missing information, assumptions, or limitations?

• Interpretation: Does the explanation describe patterns without assuming a cause?

If Solara displays a chart, you can use View Data Table to examine the values behind it. Verify important findings against the relevant information available in Panorama.

Missing data does not establish whether a student meets or does not meet the criteria in your question.

Choose the right approach for your goal

Conversational Data is particularly useful for exploratory questions when you want to compare information or investigate a trend.

For regularly monitoring a known metric, an existing Student Success report may be a better fit. If you want Solara to perform a consistent, repeatable task, such as drafting a family communication or following a planning process, consider a custom Solara tool.

Custom tools can also use Conversational Data when the feature is enabled for the district and the individual tool.