Risk & Reward

Both businesses and school districts face risks as they navigate an emerging and highly competitive market for data tools.

By Rhea R. Borja

With the federal No Child Left Behind Act requiring school districts to show how their students are—or are not—improving, the past few years have seen the commercial marketplace for K-12 data-management systems crack wide open.

Technology companies are scrambling to create or revamp Web-based products in a bid to provide fast, efficient, user-friendly data tools that will help educators bolster the bottom line for schools: student academic performance.

Both schools and companies potentially stand to gain from online data management. The nation’s nearly 15,000 school districts could be a lucrative niche for data-oriented software companies and their nonprofit counterparts. And accountability-conscious districts can use technology-based assessment and analytical tools to delve deeper into how students learn and then target...