Case Study: Forsyth County School District boosts graduation rates and student success with Microsoft Power BI

Georgia school district improves graduation rate and student success with Power BI and Azure

Forsyth County, a large Georgia school district serving more than 51,000 students across 40 schools, struggled with siloed student data and time-consuming manual analysis that made it difficult to identify the roughly 6% of students at risk of not graduating. Seeking an affordable, user-friendly analytics solution, the district — with partner Pragmatic Works — chose Microsoft Power BI and complementary Azure services (Azure SQL Database, Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake Storage, and Azure Analysis Services/Power BI Premium) to consolidate data and make insights accessible to educators.

Using Microsoft Power BI, Forsyth County implemented a unified data architecture and semantic datasets, then built dashboard-style reports for student profiles, grades, testing, discipline, and graduation tracking, and introduced automated machine learning to generate individualized graduation predictions. The rollout reduced survey analysis from weeks to about 25 minutes, saved the district more than $300,000 in staff time, improved staff ability to find and support at‑risk students, and helped drive adoption through focused training — positioning the district to raise its graduation rate above 94%.

Forsyth County

Tim Fleming

Director of Technology Services