Schoolzilla

Schoolzilla is a data management and visualization platform that provides K-12 school systems with analytics and reporting solutions. The company offers a hosted data warehouse and customizable dashboards that integrate and visualize student and operational data from various sources to inform decision-making for educators.

The platform originated in 2009 as an internal project within Aspire Public Schools, a high-performing charter school network. Led by Lynzi Ziegenhagen, the team collaborated with educators to address data challenges, creating what would become Schoolzilla's core technology. Ziegenhagen, who holds a bachelor's in symbolic systems from Stanford and a master's in computer science, founded Schoolzilla as an independent Public Benefit Company in 2013, with Heidi Williamson also listed as a founder. The company spun out to offer its technology to other school systems. Prior to its acquisition, Schoolzilla had raised $10 million from investors including Kapor Capital, Reach Capital, and NewSchools Venture Fund.

Schoolzilla operates on an institutional business model, selling its platform directly to school districts and administrators through a top-down sales approach. Its products are designed for district-wide implementation rather than for individual teachers. The platform aggregates data from over 135 sources, including student information systems, assessments, and behavior management systems. This data is centralized into a secure data warehouse, cleaned, and presented through interactive dashboards and reports via products like its Mosaic dashboard and Assessment Explorer. These tools enable educators to track metrics such as attendance, grades, assessment growth, and college readiness, helping them monitor progress toward goals and improve student outcomes. In 2016, Schoolzilla acquired Decision Science Labs, a school spending tracker.

In October 2019, Schoolzilla was acquired by Renaissance Learning, a major education technology company specializing in assessment and instructional software. The acquisition was driven by Schoolzilla's need for a larger sales division to continue its growth, which would have been difficult to build independently. The deal integrated Schoolzilla's comprehensive data dashboards with Renaissance's assessment data, aiming to provide educators with a more complete view of student performance. At the time of the acquisition, Schoolzilla served over 140 school districts across 31 states.

Keywords: edtech, data analytics, K-12 education, data visualization, student data, data dashboards, data warehousing, school administration, education technology, reporting solution