Why Use Bento?
Understand the Perspectives of Teachers and Principals
Bento provides a window into the opinions of teachers and principals throughout the country on a range of critical education topics.
Be Your Own Researcher
Bento lets you be your own researcher by drilling into the results of educator surveys, comparing results against state and national benchmarks, assessing change over time, and exporting and sharing your analysis with others.
Inform Your Decisions
In addition to survey data, Bento also visualizes state and school district-level data from dozens of publicly available public education data sets and makes it easy to find insights.
Designed with Education Leaders in Mind
Bento was designed with busy education leaders in mind. You don’t need to be a statistician to use it. Rather than relying on Excel spreadsheets or computational software, Bento lets users quickly:
Filter & Segment data by survey respondent attributes (e.g. years of teaching), school attributes (e.g. size), and district attributes (e.g. urbanicity) to compare and understand relevant educator survey data
Benchmark responses from geographic and demographic subgroups to the national sample
Share findings with curated reports and easy-to-understand data visualizations
What People Are Saying
“Bento is an easy way to get a national picture on so many of the questions we are looking to answer, like what curriculum teachers are using and how much money districts are spending per student. I also would have loved to have a resource like Bento in graduate school.”
— Amber Moore, Senior Associate, Policy and Advocacy, Chiefs for Change
“I really take advantage of the filters and segments on Bento to understand who the survey respondents are serving because we are focused on specific populations.”
— Jenny Muniz, Policy Analyst, New America
“I use the Bento Survey Explorer to understand where folks are using high-quality curriculum and am able to link this to student performance outcomes on the Bento Dashboard to identify gaps or differences in district performance.”
— Tara McDonald, Partnerships Manager, Teaching Lab
“Bento's data displays are helpful for education practitioners to compare teacher perceptions in their area to teacher perceptions elsewhere.”
— Eric Crane, Senior Research Associate and Project Director, WestEd
“Bento is useful for quick data references and is visually beautiful.”
— Data Analyst, Education Foundation
“In my Product role at a K-12 education company, Bento gives me helpful and beautiful visualization to identify areas that could benefit from additional classroom resources.”
— Kevin Feyen, Vice President, William H. Sadlier
“For these large, weighted survey files, Excel can be cumbersome to use, and cleaning the data in R or Stata takes time and careful attention to detail. Bento allows me to get quick cuts of the data and is much faster than processing the data myself.”
— Matt Sant Miller, Project Manager, Redstone Strategy
“Bento is a great teaching tool to show descriptive level data.”
— Jason Siegel, Graduate Level Professor
“Bento is really good for state benchmarking. Comparison at the state level often comes up.”
— Program Officer, Education Foundation
What Data Can I See in Bento?
Teacher and Principal Survey Data
Nationally representative survey results from teachers and principals on a range of education topics including curriculum choices, teacher preparation, COVID response, school safety, and more.
The survey data in Bento come from surveys administered to RAND’s American Teacher Panel and American School Leader Panel, some of the largest surveys or teachers and principals in the country. Some surveys include state-specific representative samples that are viewable in Bento.
Surveys viewable in Bento include:
American Instructional Resources Surveys
The Learn Together Surveys
COVID-19 Response Surveys
Measure to Learn and Improve Surveys
Demographics and Education Outcomes Data
Publicly available education outcomes data, demographic data, and more from states and school districts across the country. Examples include:
Student Demographics
NAEP Scores
High School Graduation Rates
Financial Data
College Readiness Data Teacher Salary Data COVID-19 Relief Funding Data Civil Rights Data Collection School Discipline Data
Who Can Benefit from Using Bento?
School District Leaders
If you’re a decisionmaker in a public school district, you and your team can use Bento to:
Benchmark your district’s achievement rates and demographics against others
Compare your district to similar districts to determine areas of improvement and learn from best practices
Quickly find the statistics and visuals you need, export them, and use them in your work
Review survey results to examine perspectives from teachers and principals on a range of topics that can inform your work
Review survey results to benchmark your curriculum and professional development materials against the materials teachers and principals are using nationally and in selected states
“Many districts now have their own data visualization tools, but Bento is more visually pleasing and really helpful for those comparative type analyses.”
State-level Leaders
If you work in a state education agency or other state-level organization, you can use Bento to:
View survey responses from teachers and school leaders in your state to understand their perspectives and answer questions about critical topics like COVID-19 responses, curriculum, and school safety
View survey responses from teachers and school leaders in your state to learn about what curriculum and professional development materials they are using
Filter and segment these results to find responses for just the subgroups of educators you’re interested in (e.g. urban teachers)
Benchmark survey responses in your state against national averages, and compare them to responses from educators in other states
Compare districts in your state on key education outcome metrics
Export useful visualizations that you can add directly to your presentations or memos
“I really like all of the filtering options in Bento. It is helpful to break down survey responses by key metrics like how long a teacher has been in the field.”
Other Education Sector Leaders & Advocates
Whether you’re staff at a foundation or education non-profit, a university professor, or a parent/advocate, Bento can help inform your work by bringing together a variety of data points, visualizing them, and enabling you to use them easily. Bento lets you:
View survey responses from teachers and school leaders from across the country to questions about critical topics like COVID-19 response, curriculum, teacher preparation, college and career readiness, and school safety
Filter and segment these results to find responses for just the subgroups of educators you’re interested in (e.g. urban teachers or principals in California)
Compare school districts on a variety of academic performance metrics, demographics, and other data
Easily create themed reports to bring together the data you care about and share it with others
“I use Bento to create reports to share back with state policy makers and agencies.”
Bento in the News
Gates Foundation: “What We’re Learning” Blog
MGT Blog: Organizational Effectiveness for Improved Student Outcomes