How Are Massachusetts' Schools Performing?

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. – Malcolm X

No one can deny the importance of high quality education for elementary and secondary students. However, the problems in the education system are complex. Schools have limited resources in terms of funding and staffing. There can be significant differences in the education outcomes between schools based on socioeconomic factors. And it is no secret that a lot of teachers are burned out, especially after teaching during the pandemic.

In this project, I pretended that I was recently hired by the State of Massachusetts Department of Education to analyze data about schools in the state for the previous year. I was tasked to create a dashboard with an overview and answer the following questions:

• How does class size affect college attendance rates?
• Which schools have the lowest graduation rates?
• What are the top school districts in the state for 4th grade math scores?

Key Insights

• There does not appear to be a relationship between average class size and college attendance rates.
• Schools with a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students tend to have lower college attendance rates regardless of average class size.
• The bottom 10 schools in terms of graduation have rates between 8.7%-19.0%. These schools have over 56% of students considered to be economically disadvantaged.
• There are eleven school districts that have 4th grade math scores of 80% or greater.

The Data

This project is based on real data for 2017 taken from the Massachusetts Department of Education website. The specific dataset used is a combination of multiple reports and can be found here. The dataset has 1861 rows and 298 columns including various metrics.

Metrics used in this project include:

• Average Class Size
• % Attending College
• % Graduated
• % Economically Disadvantaged
• % MCAS 4th Grade P+A

There were 1,800 distinct schools and nearly 1 million students represented in this dataset.

Analysis

I used Tableau for this project. Tableau is a data visualization software used to create various charts and graphs that can be combined into dashboards. The user of a dashboard should be able to quickly understand the data at a high level without becoming caught up in details.

How does class size affect college attendance rates?

To answer this question, I created a scatterplot showing the relationship between the average class size and percentage of students attending college. There does not appear to be a strong relationship between the two. The smallest class sizes (6-10) have college attendance rates less than 60% while the largest class sizes (>25) have rates over 90%. Most average class sizes fall in the 12-20 range and have college attendance rates anywhere between 10-95%.

To add further depth to this analysis, I also looked at the percentage of economically disadvantaged students. In this scatterplot, the colors of the dots representing each school range from dark blue to dark orange. The schools represented by darkest blue dots have the lowest percentage of economically disadvantaged students while the darkest orange have the highest percentage. Schools with higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students tend to have lower college attendance rates regardless of average class size. Interestingly, the smallest average class sizes also have high percentages of economically disadvantaged students.

Which schools have the lowest graduation rates?

I used a bar chart to show the 10 schools with the lowest graduation rates which range from 8.7% to 19.0%. The lowest two, Springfield Public Day High School and Boston Day and Evening Academy Charter School, are below 10%. Doing some research, I found that most of these schools are either charter schools or alternative high schools.

I also looked at the percentage of economically disadvantaged students for these schools. All 10 schools have over 56% of students considered to be economically disadvantaged, with four schools over 80%. Since most of these schools were identified to be either charter or alternative high schools, further analysis could be done to determine the extent of the relationship. Do these schools specifically target students who are at risk for not graduating from high school? Are there other factors that contribute to the low graduation rates?

What are the top school districts in the state for 4th grade math scores?

Math scores are measured by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). Using a bar chart, I looked for the school districts that had the highest percentage of 4th grade students at the proficient (P) and advanced (A) levels. The Department of Education is especially interested in the schools with scores over 80%. There are two districts, Hingham and Winchester, that have scores over 90%. Another nine districts have scores in the 80% range. A reference line was added to the chart to group the schools with scores of 80% or greater.?

The graphs answering the above questions were combined into an interactive dashboard. Click here to see the interactive dashboard on Tableau Public.

Recommendations

Based on the above analysis, my recommendations are:

• Instead of reducing class sizes, focus on how to increase the number of economically disadvantaged students attending college.
• Do further analysis of the bottom 10 schools in terms of graduation rates. These schools all have over 56% of students that are economically disadvantaged. Are there other factors that contribute to the low graduation rates?
• Study the school districts that have the top 4th grade math scores to determine best practices that could be rolled out to other schools.
• There is a lot of additional analysis that could be done at a more granular level with this data using racial diversity metrics, geographic data, and staffing levels.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my article! This project was completed as part of the Data Career Jumpstart Data Analytics Accelerator program. I would love to hear any feedback you have. Leave a comment below or connect with me. You can also check out my data analysis project portfolio website here.