From Data Points to Discoveries: Massachusetts Schooling Under the Microscope

School Education plays a major role in shaping individuals and in turn the future of society. Their importance cannot be overstated, as they serve as the foundation upon which progress, knowledge, and growth are built.

The skills that we all have today as grown-ups were cultivated right from a young age through school education. The early years of schooling instill in us not only knowledge, but also various skills, critical thinking abilities, social interactions, teamwork, fostering meaningful friendships, and character development.

With School education playing a major role in shaping individuals, I recognize the crucial responsibility of examining this data to identify potential enhancements that can be introduced into the educational system. By harnessing the power of data, I aim to contribute to the ongoing betterment of the educational experience and pave the way for a more promising future.

I have used the Massachusetts Public Schools Data from Kaggle for the analysis. Data for about 1800 schools can be found here.

Did you know that being Economically disadvantaged can play a major role in Graduation %?

John F Kennedy School has the highest inclusivity.

Females have a higher % of attending College post-Graduation.

Let’s Start with The Data

The dataset I have used for the analysis is from Kaggle. The dataset is a combination of various reports from the Massachusetts Department of Education.

The dataset has about 1861 rows and 298 columns.

Let’s Start with The Data

The dataset I have used for the analysis is from Kaggle. The dataset is a combination of various reports from the Massachusetts Department of Education.

The dataset has about 1861 rows and 298 columns.

The ASK

I am pretending to be recently hired by the State of Massachusetts to analyze their education data for the purpose of the analysis. The Department of Education Superintendent is looking for the following:

• A report to show the school board the state of the school system.
• How does class size affect college admission?
• What are the top math schools in the state?
• What schools are struggling the most?

The Analysis

Let’s dive right in!

1.KPIs

First and foremost, the Superintendent would like to have a high-level knowledge of what the numbers look like:

This is the KPI for the dataset.

Although there are 1861 rows, when we look at the distinct number of schools there are 1800 total.

2. Bottom 10 schools with Low Graduation %

The task is to find the Bottom-most schools with the lowest percentage of Graduation so that we can improve the quality of education in those targetted schools.

All of these High schools have a low graduation percentage of below 20%

3. Relationship between Class size and % of students attending college:

Average Class Size vs % Attending College. The color shows % Economically Disadvantaged. The data is filtered on % Attending College & Average Class Size. The % Attending College filter keeps Non-Null values only. The Average Class Size filter keeps Non-Null values only.

• In addition to looking at the relationship between Average Class size and % of students attending College, I have also highlighted the students who are economically disadvantaged in blue.
• The majority of the points are focussed in the center which means when the class size is between 12 and 22, a higher % of students have attended college.
• Most of the blue dots representing Economically disadvantaged students are below the 40 mark, which means that irrespective of the college size these students have a lower rate of attending college.

4. Top districts for 4th Grade Maths

• To identify the Top districts providing excellent 4th Grade Maths, we have plotted the Average of students passing 4th Grade Maths and we have a Reference Line of 50 and above.
• The districts with 50 and above passing scores are: Community Day Charter Public School — Gateway (District), Orleans, Community Day Charter Public School — Prospect (District), and Community Day Charter Public School — R. Kingman Webster (District).

5. Economically Disadvantaged Vs Dropout Rate Vs %Graduation

I wanted to dive deeper and see if a student’s economic status results in a Dropout or impacts the Graduation from school.

% Dropped Out & % Graduated vs % Economically Disadvantaged. The Colour shows % Economically Disadvantaged. The data is filtered on % Dropped out and % Graduated, which keeps Non-Null values only.

There are two scatter plots here.

• The scatter plot on the left represents the impact of students’ economic status on the Dropout %.
• The scatter plot on the right represents the impact of students’ economic status on the Graduation %.
• Blue dots represent a higher value of Economically disadvantaged %.

What can we conclude?

• It is clear from the plots that there are more dropouts among students who are economically disadvantaged.
• The % Graduation rate is low among students who are economically disadvantaged.

6. Massachusetts Education Overview

Let’s assemble all of these charts to show the Department of Education Superintendent.

Dashboard representing Massachusetts Education Overview

7. Gender-based data on College Attending %

I wanted to look at the data on the difference between Male and Female Students Attending college.

For this, I have only considered two types of Colleges :

• Community College — 2 years of College education.
• Public Four-Year College — public four-year university after graduation.

% Males & % Females vs % MA Community College & % Public Four-Year

• We can see that most of the blue dots representing a higher Female % are high up on the charts, well above the 50% mark depicting the data for Community College and Public Four Year Colleges.
• The blue dots representing the Male % are well below the 40% mark.
• This clearly shows that higher percentages of Female students are attending Community College and Public four-year colleges than Male students.
• Further analysis of other types of colleges need to be done to determine if there is a higher percentage of female students attending colleges than Male.

8. The Top 10’s on Inclusivity and higher graduation %

I also wanted to see how many schools are inclusive of students belonging to other Races.

For this, I combined the data of the following to find the percentage of other races students in a school:

• The calculated field was named: Other Race %

SUM([% African American]) + SUM([% Asian]) + SUM([% Hispanic]) + SUM([% Native American])

+SUM([% Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander]) + SUM([% Multi-Race, Non-Hispanic])

• I also did a Top 10 School with high inclusivity using the formula to find the Top 10 and dragging it to the Color Marks.

RANK([Other Race %]) <= [Highlight Parameter]

Where Highlight Parameter was set to 10. It can be changed between 1 and 30.

Here is a snapshot of the Highlight Parameter setup:

• John F Kennedy is the top-most school with the highest inclusivity.
• Boston is the district with the highest Graduation % with 118 schools followed by Worcester with 45 schools and Spring Field with 58 schools.

Key Takeaways and Call to Action!

1. The Bottom schools having low graduation rates are all below 20% which is considerably low.

Recommendation: A comprehensive assessment for teachers, students, and administrative staff to identify the root cause for low graduation rates should be done. This will give us the reasons behind low graduation rates which can be further mitigated.

2. There seems to be a relationship between Average class size and the percentage attending College.

Recommendation: Keeping the average class size between 12 and 22 students would boost the percentage of students attending College.

3. 4th Grade Math has lower passing rates in many districts.

Recommendation: To boost the passing rate of 4th Grade Maths, teachers from districts with a higher passing score in 4th-grade maths can be sent to low-performing districts to train the teachers in these districts.

Provide targeted professional development opportunities for existing math teachers. Offer workshops, training sessions, and resources that address effective teaching strategies, and methods to engage struggling students.

4. There are more dropouts and fewer graduated among Economically disadvantaged students.

Recommendation: Providing flexible schedules for such students and part-time job offers for high school students who are economically disadvantaged.

Targeted Academic Guidance, counseling, and emotional support could be provided to these students.

This was an interesting dataset to look at and analyze. I have only looked into selected columns out of the 298 columns for my analysis.

I have limited the scope of the analysis to accommodate selected columns only. There is so much data on schools like Primary, kindergarten, Middle, and High school types, their admissions, and Passing/Failing scores on other subjects for different grades!

If you found this interesting, feel free to explore other aspects of analysis using this dataset!