Case study: Functional Learning and Completion of Education Milestones
How differences in functional learning skills among children with disabilities influence their likelihood of completing primary education.
I decided to take the Google Data Analytics course during my down time this year. I am working on the capstone project and my substack is going to be my portfolio starting point.
Introduction
Welcome to Milestone Minds! In this case study, I work for a fictional company, Milestone Minds, along with some key team members.
Scenario
I am a junior data analyst working on the education team at Milestone Minds in Los Angeles. The director of the education department believes the success of learners with disabilities depends on completion of their educational milestones. Therefore, our team wants to understand how children with and without functional and behavior difficulties are completing educational milestones and bridging the gap across learning skills. From these insights, our team will design a new strategy and policy to convert low completion rates into higher completion rates in learners with different abilities.
Characters and teams
● Milestone Minds: A company that provides consulting services and solutions to the schools, clinics and centers that provide developmental and behavior support, education and services to the neurodivergent and differently abled communities. Milestone Minds sets itself apart by also offering direct service professionals and parent consultation, making education and neuro-affirming care more accessible and inclusive to people with different abilities outside of the confines of school. The majority of consumers opt for direct service consultation with our professionals; about 80% of consumers are schools using the consulting option for Milestone Minds to transform their learning and accommodation policies.
● Mrs. X: The director of education and my manager. X is responsible for the development of campaigns and initiatives to promote the best possible educational policies for institutions. These may include assistive technology, specialized programs, and providing trained in-school DSPs.
● Milestone Minds Educational analytics team: A team of data analysts who are responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data that helps guide strategy. I joined this team six months ago and have been busy learning about MM’s mission and business goals, as well as how I, as a junior data analyst, can help MM achieve them.
●Milestone Minds executive team: The detail-oriented executive team will decide whether to approve the recommended education changes and strategies and how to implement them.
About the company
In 2024, Milestone Minds launched a successful behavior consulting offering. Since then, the company has grown to providing consultation services to educational institutions across Los Angeles. The services can be accessed across all of America but the company is geared and focused on where it was born out of, Los Angeles California.
Historically, Milestone Minds has emphasized building awareness and offering direct service professionals (DSPs) to schools through flexible staffing models, including contracted behavior therapists and floating DSPs. This approach allowed schools to access tailored developmental and behavioral support without requiring long-term commitments, creating two main categories of clients: those who receive temporary or one-time consultation services, and those who invest in long-term, integrated partnerships with Milestone Minds.
The company's leadership now aims to shift from broad service delivery to data-informed, targeted interventions that increase primary education completion rates among children with functional difficulties. By leveraging educational analytics and outcomes data, Milestone Minds is designing strategies that not only identify gaps in functional learning skills but also promote evidence-based practices to close them. The goal is to ensure that more learners with disabilities are supported with interventions that lead to meaningful academic progress and milestone achievement.
Milestone Minds’ educational analysts have concluded that long-term, integrated support programs yield significantly better educational outcomes for children with functional difficulties than short-term or one-time consultations. While flexible service models have allowed Milestone Minds to reach a broad range of schools and districts, the leadership team now believes that focusing on sustained partnerships will be key to improving primary education completion rates among learners with disabilities.
Rather than launching broad strategies, the director of education has identified an opportunity to convert short-term consulting schools into long-term partners. These schools are already familiar with Milestone Minds’ services and have shown interest in supporting students with functional learning needs.
The team has been tasked with a clear goal: Develop strategies to increase the number of schools engaging in long-term, outcomes-driven partnerships. To do so, the educational analytics team must first understand how outcomes differ between students receiving short-term support versus those in long-term programs, identify the barriers schools face in committing to extended interventions, and explore how targeted policies and data-informed strategies can bridge the gap in functional learning skills and improve overall completion rates for children with disabilities.
Ask
Three core questions will guide Milestone Minds' future intervention strategy:
How do students with functional learning and behavior difficulties differ from those without in terms of educational milestone completion?
What factors increase the likelihood that students with functional learning and behavior difficulties will complete primary education?
What evidence-based interventions are most effective in supporting these learners and improving outcomes?
Mrs. X, the Director of Education, has assigned me to investigate the first question:
How do students with and without functional learning difficulties differ in completing primary education milestones?
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My next post will be exploring the core question above.
