The questions New Jersey schools ask

What problem does DataVot actually solve?

Each year New Jersey sends a file containing every student’s scores and performance levels. In most schools exactly one person is able to open it usefully, so every question — a different grade, a different subject, last year against this year — queues behind that person. DataVot turns that same file into dashboards and reports the rest of your staff can use without asking anyone.

Is this a student information system, or does it replace one?

No. DataVot reads New Jersey state assessment results and does nothing else. It is not an SIS, not a gradebook, not an early-warning system, and it does not hold enrollment, attendance, discipline or grades.

Do we have to change how we get our data?

No. You upload the official NJSLA file exactly as it arrives from the state. There is no integration to build, no nightly feed, and nothing for your SIS vendor to enable.

Which tests does it understand?

NJSLA is recognized out of the box, including performance levels, proficiency cuts, test codes, subjects and seasons. Support is built around New Jersey assessment data specifically; it is not a generic spreadsheet tool relabeled for schools.

Have you worked with our exact file yet?

The layout DataVot expects is modeled on sample NJSLA exports. NJDOE publishes no fixed record layout for this file — each district generates it from the state’s reporting system — so the first thing we do with a new school is confirm it against your actual export. Column headers are configured per test, so a difference between your file and what we expect is a setting we change, not a rebuild you wait on.

If your export differs from what we expect, we adjust it before your staff ever sees a dashboard. We would rather tell you this up front than have you discover it on your first upload.

Will you sign our data privacy agreement?

Yes — your district’s own agreement, or the New Jersey SDPC National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA), whichever your board already uses. We sign before any student data is uploaded, not after. A template is published at the Data Privacy Agreement page so your counsel can read it before you ask. If you want to see your own numbers before the paperwork is done, send us a file with the student name and ID columns removed — that way nothing identifying moves until the agreement is in place.

Do you sell or share student data?

Your data is never sold, published, or used to train a model, with no exception for anonymized or aggregated data. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, and not to build a product of our own. No outside company ever receives it for its own purposes — only our named infrastructure providers, working solely on our instructions. Which providers those are, and what each one holds, is answered under “Which other companies are involved?” on this page.

Where is our data, and who can reach it?

Uploaded results are encrypted at rest (AES-GCM) and in transit (TLS), and every user is scoped to what you decided they can see. Dashboards are aggregated on the server and return counts only, so raw student rows never travel to a browser to draw a chart. The database itself runs in Cloudflare’s Eastern North America region with read replication switched off, so no copy exists elsewhere. Our Security Overview page has the rest of it — two-factor authentication, the tamper-evident audit trail, and how DataVot rates against every category of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, including what we have not met.

What is your backup and recovery story?

Three layers. The database can be exported whole, at any moment, as a single restorable file. The encryption key that makes uploaded results readable is backed up separately and deliberately never travels with the data — a copy of the database alone decrypts nothing. And our database provider keeps a rolling thirty days of point-in-time restore, so we can roll back to a moment rather than to last night.

We also test the restore rather than assuming it. Part of the release gate takes a fresh backup, restores it into an empty database, and checks every value survived — including decrypting a student record out of the restored copy and confirming each teacher’s access restrictions came back intact. A backup nobody has restored is not a backup, and a restore that quietly widened everyone’s access would be the worst way for one to “work”.

Can DataVot staff look at our data?

Only with your consent, and it is visible when it happens. Support access creates a short-lived, audited session that never uses or reveals anyone’s password, and a banner stays on screen for the whole session. Every support session generates an email record. Emailing the supported user directly as well is a single service-wide setting, off by default; when it is on it applies to every school, and that user receives the notice with the System Admin copied. A school that wants its users notified can ask us to turn it on. There is no silent back door and no shared administrator login.

What happens to our data if we stop?

You can ask for an export, return or deletion at any time by contacting us. Because terms never renew automatically, stopping needs no notice period and no cancellation procedure — you simply do not renew. The commitments are written down in the School Data Assurance Letter.

Which other companies are involved?

Cloudflare handles hosting, database, security and request processing, and Resend handles transactional email delivery. They are named in the Privacy Policy. There is no advertising network, no analytics vendor building a profile of your staff, and no third party other than the providers named above ever receives student data.

Can a teacher see the whole district?

Only if you decide so. Each staff member is given every school, specific named schools, or none — set per person and changed whenever you like. The restriction applies to the underlying rows, not just to what the screen hides, so a restricted teacher cannot reach other schools’ students through a report either.

Can teachers publish things to everyone?

That is a school-wide setting you control. If you would rather teachers kept their reports to themselves, turn sharing off and they can still build and save their own.

Who administers it on our side?

One lead administrator, plus any co-administrators they promote. Administrators upload data sets, invite staff, set access, and publish district reports.

How much training does staff need?

The dashboards need none — they are selectors and a chart. Building a pivot report is choosing which fields go in rows, columns and values, which is the same idea as a spreadsheet pivot table and is the one concept worth walking a group through once. Beyond that there is a written user guide inside the application, covering uploads, reports, charts, filters, exports and account management; it is public, so you can read the whole thing at datavot.com/help before deciding anything.

Do reports have to be rebuilt every year?

Not while their own year’s data changes. A saved report stores the layout rather than a copy of the data and points at its data set, so when that data set is updated or replaced, the report shows the new rows with nobody rebuilding it. It also tells you plainly when the numbers underneath it have changed. Each year’s results are a data set of their own, so a new year does not flow into last year’s report; it is brought in with Compare across years, which combines the years into one source you can break out by year.

Can we compare across years when the state renames columns?

Yes, and most of it is done for you. Columns with the same name across years are lined up automatically; columns whose names differ but clearly describe the same field are suggested as one field for you to confirm or split apart; anything DataVot cannot place is shown so you can line it up by hand. Last year’s “Performance Level” against this year’s “Level” is exactly the case that gets suggested.

What it deliberately will not do is silently fuse two differently-named columns. A suggestion you have to accept takes a few clicks; a wrong merge nobody was asked about is a trend line that is quietly false, which is the worse of the two failures.

Does it produce what we need for the board?

It builds the tables New Jersey’s board-presentation template asks for, including statewide comparison figures published by the state, ready to paste into the department’s own deck. Student-group cells below ten students are suppressed, which is the reporting threshold NJQSAC uses. Board tables are built by administrators, deliberately not teachers: a teacher restricted to some schools would produce a district table quietly missing the rest.

Two limits to plan around. The template is built around year-over-year change, so it fills in properly once you have two years of results uploaded; in your first year the current-year tables are there and the comparison columns wait for the second file. NJDOE publishes statewide figures in the autumn following a spring administration, so a presentation given before they are out has no state column for the year being presented — the page says so rather than drawing an empty one.

Is it accessible for staff who need it to be?

It is built for it. Every dialog can be driven and dismissed from the keyboard and returns focus where it was, headings and landmarks are structured for screen readers, images carry alternative text, colour contrast is checked against the AA threshold in both light and dark modes, and the application follows the operating system’s high-contrast setting when a user turns it on. Several of these are enforced automatically on every release rather than left to review.

What we do not have is an independent audit or a published VPAT, and we would rather tell you that than imply a conformance statement we have not paid to have assessed. What we publish instead is our own written self-assessment against all 50 WCAG 2.1 A and AA criteria, at /accessibility — it names the evidence for each one and is explicit about which were machine-verified and which were judged by inspection, including the gaps. If your district requires an independent attestation as a condition of purchase, say so early and we will quote it.

What does it not do?

It does not write your narrative slides, predict individual student outcomes, recommend interventions, or hold anything other than assessment results.

NJSLA Science is supported, including its four-level scale. One caveat worth knowing: NJDOE labels the Science levels "Level 1" to "Level 4", and the ELA and mathematics scale uses the same wording for five levels, so DataVot reads the subject column to tell them apart — a science file whose subject column is missing or mislabelled would be read on the wrong scale.

What does it cost?

One plan and one price, published in full on the Pricing sheet at datavot.com/pricing — the price, the number of user accounts it covers, what extra accounts cost, and what is never charged for. We keep the figures in exactly one place so that a document you forward cannot quietly disagree with the quote we send you.

Three things that do not change whatever the figures are. Payment is by purchase order — there is no card to enter and no online checkout. Every price is agreed in writing before anything is invoiced. And terms never renew automatically: each year is a decision you make rather than one that happens to you.

What paperwork does our business office need from you?

We hold what your office needs to set us up: a Business Registration Certificate and W-9. Ask for them in one email and they come back together with the signed agreement — you should not have to chase a supplier for a certificate before you can raise the order.

New Jersey requires proof of a vendor’s business registration before a public school contract is awarded, so that one is not optional and we do not treat it as a formality. If your district requires something not on that list, tell us what it is and we will say plainly whether we have it, before you raise the order rather than after. The Getting started sheet has the same list with what each one is for.

Who is behind DataVot?

DataVot was built by an educator of thirty years, including about a decade as a New Jersey district testing technology coordinator working with these exact assessment files. It is operated by Salesforce Hub LLC, an independent New Jersey company with no relationship to Salesforce.com.

How many districts use it?

DataVot is new, and we would rather say so than imply a customer list we do not have. We are taking a limited number of New Jersey districts for the 2026–27 year, which is why the offer below is to load your own results rather than to show you someone else’s.