Tell us about your company and the problem it solves, or its benefit to learners or educators.
Panorama Education is a platform driving end-to-end student support and learning, serving 1 in 4 U.S. students and partnering with 2,000 K-12 districts and 10 state education agencies across the country. At the heart of our work is a simple question: how do we help schools better understand every student—their strengths, their story, and what they need next?
That sounds simple. But in most school systems, the information educators need lives in silos. Academic performance is in one place. Behavior and attendance are somewhere else. Student voice is another system entirely. When those dots stay disconnected, it becomes really hard to understand what’s actually going on with a student or what kind of support will actually make a difference. It might also mean connecting a student’s academic path to post-secondary goals, whether that’s college, trade school or getting right into the workforce, so the adults in their corner can support their entire journey.
What Panorama does is help districts connect those dots. We bring together data across academics, attendance, behavior, and engagement and turn that data into intelligence, and that intelligence into action—so educators can see the full picture of a student and respond more quickly, confidently, and effectively. That might mean identifying a student who’s beginning to fall through the cracks, helping a counselor understand whether a student is on track to graduate, enabling a district leader to see patterns across schools and respond systemically, or tracking whether a student is on a path toward college, career, or workforce readiness.
What is the challenge educators face today that is fixable?
Most districts have more data than ever before. They can see when a student is struggling. They can see attendance issues, behavior patterns, academic performance, even indicators around belonging or safety. But too often, that information doesn’t get to the right educator in time, or it reaches them without enough context to act on it well.
So the information is there, but it’s fragmented, delayed, and disconnected from action.
That’s very fixable. We see every day that when districts connect their data and build clear workflows around it, outcomes improve. Educators are able to respond earlier. Counselors have better context. District and school leaders can allocate support more effectively. And most importantly, students get the support they need at the right time.
What is the challenge educators face today that will persist?
Chronic absenteeism is one of the most persistent challenges in K-12 education today, and I don’t think it’s going away on its own.
What makes absenteeism so difficult is that it’s rarely just an attendance problem. It’s often a signal. A student may not feel connected to school. They may be struggling academically. They may not feel safe. There may be things happening at home that the school doesn’t fully see. Our own research shows that school factors like safety, climate, and student engagement can influence a student’s likelihood of missing school. For example, elementary school students who don’t feel safe at school are 1.5 times more likely to be chronically absent; and middle school students who don’t feel engaged are 1.8 times more likely. If you treat absenteeism as a narrow operational issue, you miss the broader story.
The districts making real progress are the ones that treat absenteeism as a whole-system challenge. They’re building an integrated view of students and creating the workflows to act on that picture. Instead of only seeing which students miss school, these districts are considering the underlying reasons for the absence and the next steps.
What are the areas of education or training and workforce development that are being overlooked?
One overlooked area in education right now is AI governance and quality. There’s a lot of innovation happening right now, which is exciting. But in many places, AI in K-12 still feels like the Wild West. Tools are entering classrooms and district workflows very quickly, often without enough scrutiny around privacy, security, or quality.
One of the tricky things about AI is that it can produce something that looks polished and sounds confident without being good. That’s a real risk in education. Districts need to evaluate AI tools with the same seriousness they bring to curriculum, assessment, and student data privacy. What problem is this tool solving? Is it safe? Is student data protected? Is the output actually high quality? Is it improving educator decision-making, or just creating the illusion of support?
The opportunity with AI is real. But without strong governance and a high bar for quality, districts risk adopting tools that add risk instead of value.
What do you foresee will be a challenge in education in three to five years?
A key challenge for the next 3-5 years will be considering how we want to use AI in education, just as every organization and every part of society is wrestling with these questions. Soon, school districts won’t be wondering whether they should use AI, they’ll be considering whether the AI they plan to use is delivering better outcomes for students—whether it’s high quality, whether it’s safe, and whether it’s helping educators make better decisions for students.
That’s where I think the biggest risk sits. AI is incredibly powerful, but it is not the “easy button.” It can generate outputs that look useful but are actually noncompliant, inaccurate, and poorly designed for educational settings. If districts don’t develop the capacity to evaluate quality, they may end up scaling tools that look helpful on the surface but aren’t actually improving outcomes.
The districts that will be in the strongest position are the ones building the right foundation now. That means having a secure and comprehensive view of student data. It means identifying clear AI use cases tied to real district priorities like MTSS, special education, or attendance. It means creating governance structures that keep human judgment in the loop. And it means being disciplined about privacy, security, and continuous evaluation.
Ultimately, the deepest promise of AI in education is humanity. If AI can absorb the administrative weight that pulls teachers and counselors away from students, it creates space for the relationships that actually change kids’ lives. But it only becomes possible if quality is a central measure of success. The districts that hold that line over the next three to five years will be the ones that look back and say AI made their schools more connected and human, not less.