Case Study: Tacoma Public Schools achieves faster, data-driven reading assessments with Microsoft Power BI

School principal builds Microsoft Power Platform solution to improve reading assessments

Tacoma Public Schools was struggling with its Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA2) workflow: teachers recorded detailed observations on paper but only a single score was entered into the district system, making it hard to understand student needs, form effective groups, or quickly share data. To address this, staff at Tacoma Public Schools used Microsoft Power BI as part of the broader Microsoft Power Platform stack (Power Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint, Teams, and Surface) to digitize and visualize assessment data in a way teachers could easily access.

Assistant Principal Lauren Taylor built a Power Apps front end that saves detailed DRA2 data to a SharePoint list, uses Power Automate to push updates into Power BI, and embeds the Power BI dashboards in Microsoft Teams for easy teacher access. The Microsoft Power BI–enabled solution gave teachers and interventionists immediate access to rich student profiles, sped decision-making for grouping and interventions, reduced time spent gathering data, and enabled administrators to see building-level needs — with the app in use at one school and potential to scale district-wide.

Tacoma Public Schools

Lauren Taylor

Assistant Principal