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Data Viz Agenda for Achieve Hartford

Posted on Author Marissa Block

After meeting with Rob from Achieve Hartford this week, we’ve determined an initial agenda to work with in the upcoming weeks. For now, most of the data I will be working with is achievement related, usually test scores from the state tests. The first task involves building on the interactive map I created last week, but this time including achievement data. More specifically, the map will show the distribution of schools based on the percentage of students at each school at the proficient level on the CMT (Connecticut Mastery Test) and CAPT (Connecticut Academic Performance Test). This will allow viewers to easily visualize graphically where the better performing schools are located.

Eventually, it would be good to incorporate several years worth of this data, and then create a visual progression over time, to determine if the higher performing schools are consistent across years, or if there are any dramatic changes within schools across years. This interactive school finder is more detailed than the map I made in my previous post, as it lets individuals search for specific schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, meaning individuals can type in their own address and see what schools are in their immediate vicinity. Additionally, I’m hoping to add an outline of the boundaries of Hartford and possibly the boundaries of the four school zones located within the city. BatchGeo seems to be limited in this respect.

The second priority is to create an interactive chart of each schools achievement progression overtime through CMT scores. The primary interactive feature would be the ability for the viewer to select the characteristics they are interested in, such as the specific school names or types of schools (magnet or district) he or she is interested in rather than viewing a massive chart of the 30+ schools in the HPS system. A second chart would be designed in a similar manner, but would look at the achievement progression of cohorts of students.

Something along the lines of this interactive visualization in the following link: Interactive Chart Example

Partnering with Achieve Hartford

Posted on Author Marissa Block

Throughout the course of the semester, I will be partnering with the organization Achieve Hartford, a nonprofit education advocacy group. Fortunately, I had some exposure to this organization last semester through the Community Learning Initiative, in which I co-authored a study on the characteristics of students in the Hartford Public School (HPS) system. This past experience helped fuel my interest to work more closely with Achieve Hartford, and learn the art of data visualization in the process.

Through research, publications, and community forums, Achieve Hartford raises awareness about the state of education reform in Hartford and hopes to facilitate the engagement of parents, businesses, and community and school leaders in the process. For my role, the research and publications will be the most relevant aspect of their work. Their research is conducted in an independent and credible manner, in order to raise awareness about facts and issues affecting the HPS system. Achieve Hartford’s primary goal in terms of data visualization is to optimize their presentation of the most interesting and meaningful data by highlighting its worth through visualizations and thus making it more accessible to parents, rather than reading through an entire report.

Though I am still in the very early stages of expanding my knowledge of data visualization tools, I am certain that interactive charts  and tables will be beneficial in helping to consolidate data from several reports, possibly with achievement data of test scores. Additionally, geographical visualizations of relevant indicators will also be useful to identify any possible trends. Something as simple as an interactive map that shows the spatial distribution of Hartford schools across the four school zones in Hartford might help parents make more informed decisions about school choice.

I look forward to working with Achieve Hartford this semester and I hope to create data visualizations that will positively complement their work.

 

View Distribution of School Types in HPS in a full screen map

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Assignment 2B

Posted on Author Raymond Li

This semester, I am interning at the Injury Prevention Center at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. The IPC is focused on educating and creating programs that will help reduce unintentional injury and violence among children, teenagers, and adults. Recently, injury prevention has gained attention within the field of public health due to the staggering amounts of injuries that happen each year. Many people believe that injuries are due to “accidents” or based on the individuals own fault, however there are many factors that can increase the risk for injury such as the environment. It is the IPC’s goal to raise awareness about injury prevention so that action can be taken to reduce these unnecessary injuries.

At the IPC, I will be helping the center by creating data visualizations based off of recent studies that have been completed. Although the research has been published, to the public’s view, the data that is presented is difficult to understand for many. Therefore, my job will be to translate the data sets that are given to me, analyze them and create visualizations that will be put up on the IPC’s website so that the public will be able to see and comprehend the work that the IPC has done. I will be working closely with Garry Lapidus, who is the director of the IPC, as well as other employees at this organization. I will also be interviewing patients, families, doctors, and other hospital personnel about injury and injury prevention that will also be put up on the website to give the data a story as well as visuals.

For the tools that I will need, it will be extremely important that I use different mapping tools, spreadsheets, as well as interactive charts and graphs that are user-friendly. Furthermore, HTML tools will be very helpful as well to put the visualization on the IPC’s website. So far I am in the preliminary stages of analysis and will hopefully be producing visualizations soon.

View Types of Schools in the Hartford Area in a full screen map