The App for Connecticut Education Data

The School and State Finance Project (SSFP) is a nonpartisan policy organization focused on ensuring equitable education funding for all Connecticut students. SSFP needed a web application to visualize and compare data between districts and schools.

The result, a clean, beautifully designed progressive web application with a HubSpot integration.

Get in touch Explore Services

Goal

Data Import

Ingest demographic, financial, and performance data for Connecticut schools and districts and visualize it using graphs, allowing the user to compare data with ease.

Goal

Print to PDF

Allow visitors to print the data to a PDF file.

Goal

Progressive Web Application

Create a progressive web application allowing visitors to add the app to their home screen.*

* This was not an original project goal, but it was a key request from the beta testers. Read more on this in the Highlights section.

Challenge

Data Availability

Data Availability: There were two key challenges with the availability of data.

Not all data was released at the same time, with financial data often unavailable until a full year after the end of the school year. This meant we could be showing 2022/2023 data for performance metrics, but 2021/2022 data for financial metrics, on the same page.
Not all Districts or Schools had the same amount of data, nor did we always have complete data sets for a full year. This meant when comparing districts or schools, there could be instances where one entity would have data for performance, and the other would not.

Challenge

Data Import

The second major challenge was importing the provided data from the SSFP Data Team.

Challenge

Download Data

The third and final major challenge was giving the ability to allow users to download district/school data in a presentable format i.e., PDF.

Challenge

Translation

The application needs to be translated into 4 different languages.

Smart Handling of Incomplete Data

Education data rarely arrives in tidy, matching sets. Financial figures lag performance figures by up to a year, and not every school reports the same metrics. Rather than hiding gaps or defaulting to misleading zeros, the app clearly labels each data point with its reporting year and gracefully indicates when a metric is unavailable for a given entity.

Why it matters: users always know exactly what they're looking at — no false comparisons, no silent omissions.

Automated Data Pipeline

We built a resilient import system that ingests datasets from the SSFP Data Team, validates structure, and normalizes inconsistencies before publishing them to the live application. New data releases go from raw file to public-facing chart without manual reformatting.

Why it matters: the site stays current with minimal operational overhead, and data quality is enforced at the door.

One-Click PDF Export

Any district or school profile can be exported as a polished, print-ready PDF — preserving charts, branding, and layout. Reports are generated server-side on demand, so what users see on screen is exactly what lands in their downloads folder.

Why it matters: parents share with PTAs, administrators bring reports to board meetings, journalists cite figures in articles. The data travels.

Multilingual by Design

The entire interface — including dynamic chart labels and downloadable reports — is fully translated into four languages. Translations are managed through a centralized system, so future content updates flow through to every language without code changes.

Why it matters: Connecticut's school communities are multilingual; the tool serving them must be too.

Installable Progressive Web App

Originally scoped as a traditional website, the app evolved into a Progressive Web App after beta testers asked for faster, more native access. Visitors can now install EdExplorer directly to their home screen on mobile or desktop, launch it offline, and return to it like any other app.

Why it matters: a parent checking their child's school on the go shouldn't have to fish through bookmarks. One tap, and they're in.