FORMAT-Pro™ (Facilities Operations Resource Management Analysis Tool) was developed by the 21st Century School Fund with Shelton Lee, Jr. of Bintech Systems and has been informed by many local district, state, and federal partners.
FORMAT-Pro™ was first developed for use in Washington, D.C., as a desktop single-district long-range educational facilities planning tool. It organized data provided to the D.C. Superintendent’s Task Force on Education Infrastructure for the 21st Century, which helped set the course for a generational commitment to modernizing all the city’s public school facilities.
FORMAT-Pro™ was used by the DC Board of Education to rank the first DC public schools to be fully modernized or replaced, using transparent criteria, including student enrollment utilization and density, building conditions, geographic balance, and the share of students from low-income families, thereby building trust in the fairness of resource allocation decisions.
FORMAT-Pro™ supported citywide planning processes in D.C. by giving civic and school stakeholders a common evidence base for discussing community priorities and capital budget sequencing.
In partnership with the Oregon-based Innovation Partners, 14 Oregon public school districts used FORMAT-Pro™ to organize public school facilities data before a statewide database existed, helping demonstrate the value of common inventories and state-level stewardship of facilities data.
The Desktop application of FORMAT-Pro™ formed the foundation for a Facilities Information Management Guide for State and Local Education Agencies, published by the National Center on Education Statistics in 2003 and updated in 2010, 2013, and 2018.
The first use of a standardized and relational K-12 facilities and school data structure for a national study of U.S. public school construction expenditures was applied to Growth and Disparity: A Decade of U.S. Public School Construction FY1995-2004. This report examined inequity in facility spending. The 21st Century School Fund lead the research for this report in collaboration with the Building Educational Success Together (BEST) research, advocacy, and communications learning community, supported by the Ford Foundation.
FORMAT-Pro™ is used to organize and analyze school district and state fiscal and enrollment data for the 2013, 2016, 2021, and 2025 State of our Schools: America's PK-12 Public School Facilities and the state-by-state profiles.
FORMAT-Pro™ structured and standardized data was migrated to the web and powers the National Center on School Infrastructure's Facility Data Tool. The tool can engage districts and communities in public school facilities planning and accountability.