The Education Data Partnership announced Thursday that its new interactive site now allows users to compare districts or schools based on demographic, performance and financial data.
Ed-Data is the only website where users can easily manipulate California Department of Education data to make such comparisons. Users can select which data elements they see and export those results to Excel.
The comparisons function has more features than the comparisons on the old Ed-Data site. It allows users to:
- Select a specific year for comparisons and toggle between years as desired;
- Select the data elements to be included in the comparison results from a list of all fields or by data category, such as student demographic, performance and finance data;
- Add in corresponding state or county data;
- Filter results using criteria such as showing districts that have enrollments between 1 and 500 students, or showing only districts or schools within specific counties;
- Sort each data element from high to low or low to high, or sort districts or schools alphabetically;
- Add specific schools or districts into the comparison, such as adding a high-performing district or a neighboring district or school regardless of the other selection criteria used;
- “Pin” one or more districts or schools so they are always displayed in the left-most columns of the results regardless of any sorting performed by the user.
The new school and district comparisons function is still in the “beta” stage, meaning it is still a work in progress. The Ed-Data Partnership is hoping users will try out the comparisons and give feedback to help refine and improve the site.
In addition to the new comparisons function, this release has added 2014-15 demographic data, including enrollment and English learner data at the state, county, district and school levels. Graphs and table notes explain the data.
The website also includes an article, How to Create District or School Comparisons, that gives a step-by-step explanation of how to use the new function.
The Education Data Partnership is a joint effort by the California Department of Education, the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team and EdSource. It provides financial, demographic, performance, staffing and election data for schools, districts, counties and the state.
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