The State of Schools in Massachusetts
Created by: Bryan Eckard
Overview
As a (hypothetical) newly hired data analyst for the State of Massachusetts education system, the superintendent asked that I analyze their data to answer some questions about how well schools are performing. He/she specifically wanted to know the current state of the school system, how class size affects college admission, what the top math schools are, and which schools are struggling the most.
I was able to ascertain the following from the data:
The school system currently has 1,861 schools with 953,748 students.
In general, class sizes of approximately 15 students appear to have better college admission rates.
There are 75 school districts with 4th graders in the "proficient" and "advanced" categories above the desired threshold of 50% on the MCAS.
In a top-10 list of lowest graduation rates, there was a school with a 0%.
The Data
The dataset was aggregated from the Massachusetts Department of Education Website from the year 2017. The reports where the data were taken from can be found here: https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/state_report/. The dataset was provided in its aggregated state on Kaggle here: Massachusetts Public Schools Data | Kaggle.
There are a total of 302 columns. The data included ranges from information about individual districts and schools, student enrollment, student tests scores, and progress and performance indicators. The main columns of interest for this analysis were: School Name, District Name, % Graduated, Average Class Size, % Attending College, % MCAS 4thGrade Math P, % MCAS 4thGrade Math P+A, and Total Enrollment.
The Analysis
Tableau was used to conduct all analysis for this task, and I created a dashboard to display my findings which can be found on Tableau Public using this link: https://public.tableau.com/views/MA_School_Analysis/MAEducationOverview?:language=en-US&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link. After uploading the data into the software, I began by getting basic numbers for the number of schools and students. The total number of schools and students in 2017 were 1,861 and 953,748 respectively.
Next, I compared class size and the percent of students attending college using a scatterplot. The plot shows a grouping near the top around the 15-student mark. The grouping extends from 12 to 20 students. I inserted a trendline and found the R-squared score was only 0.19. Therefore, only 19% of the variation in college attendance can be explained by class size. I added another dimension by having the points change color intensity by % of Economically Disadvantaged students. It appears that a majority of schools at or below a college admission rate of 50% have higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students. I would advise the superintendent that, while classes of around 15 students fair well at getting admitted to college, class size is not the best indicator of whether a student attends college and to focus more on ways to help those students who are economically disadvantaged.
Then, I looked into which districts were performing well in math. Fourth grade math is a pivotal point because it can give a good indicator of how children will do in the future. Therefore, I began with visualizing the 4th-graders that achieved proficient (P) on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test. This yielded only 4 districts above the standard of 50% set by the superintendent. I, later, realized that this did not include all students that had passed the exam. This was because the students that achieved advanced (A) were not included. I created a second visualization with both categories of students and learned that 75 out of 410 districts were above the standard of 50%.
Finally, I looked into which schools were struggling the most. To determine this, I used the % Graduated column. The top 10 worst schools were the following:
Curtis-Tufts - 0.0%
Springfield Public Day High School - 8.7%
Boston Day and Evening Academy Charter School - 9.8%
Whaling City Junior/Senior High School - 11.4%
Springfield High School - 11.6%
Phoenix Academy Lawrence - 13.0%
Chicopee Academy - 15.8%
Dorchester Academy - 16.4%
Gateway to College at Springfield Technical Community College - 16.7%
Haverhill Alternative School - 18.2%
These schools should be investigated further to determine what needs to be improved in their processes or learning plans.
Summary
The State of Massachusetts School System Superintendent wanted to know the current state of the school system, how class size affects college admission, what the top math schools are, and which schools are struggling the most. There were 1,861 schools with 953,748 students at the time of the analysis. Class sizes of about 15 students do well in college admissions. However, there is not a strong correlation between these two variables. So, this will need to be investigated further to determine which factors better determine this. There were 75 out of 410 school districts over the standard threshold of 50%. Finally, the bottom ten schools in graduation rate are all under 20% with one at 0.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below, reach out at my email (ch13f_48@zoho.com), or connect with me on LinkedIn Bryan Eckard.
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