Case study: How a California school achieved complete control over student data using DuckDB, Polars, and Apache Arrow.
Challenge
The Certified Non Public School was struggling with expensive, inflexible educational analytics platforms that created vendor lock-in, compromised student data privacy, and delayed critical insights. The district needed a solution that would give them complete control over their educational data while ensuring FERPA compliance.
Solution
Implemented a local-first data infrastructure stack using DuckDB, Polars, and Apache Arrow to achieve complete educational data sovereignty while eliminating vendor lock-in and reducing costs.
Results
100%
100% Data Sovereignty
All student data remains entirely within the school's control, ensuring FERPA compliance
70%
70% Analytics Cost Reduction
Eliminated expensive platform subscriptions and per-query costs
Milliseconds
Millisecond Query Response
CALPADS data now processes in milliseconds instead of minutes
Real-Time
Real-Time Educational Insights
Teachers and administrators access live dashboards for immediate instructional decisions