Massachusetts Education Dashboard (Tableau)

Project Background

For this project, I simulated a scenario where I was hired by the State of Massachusetts to analyze education data. In doing so, my goal was to create a dashboard that visualizes the state of the school system in Massachusetts and answer the following questions:

• What schools are struggling the most?

• How does class size affect college admission?

• What are the districts performing the highest in 4th grade math?

The data used in this project is real data taken from the Massachusetts Department of Education website, consisting of multiple reports from 2017 compiled into one dataset. The analysis and dashboard was done using Tableau Public.

Analysis and Insights

The above dashboard was created to show the state of the school system in Massachusetts and answer the questions stated earlier. At the top of the dashboard, I've provided two key metrics - number of schools and number of students within the state.

The first major task was to identify which schools are struggling the most. The chart on the upper left shows the 10 schools with the lowest graduation percentage. The first step is to identify which schools are performing the worst, as I've done here. I would recommend taking this analysis further and trying to identify potential causes for why these schools in particular are struggling - where are they located, what are the school demographics, is the school population economically disadvantaged, etc. Perhaps identifying some potential causes for these schools are struggling can help in then developing a strategy for improvement.

Next, I wanted to explore how class size affects college admissions. Overall, the class size with the highest percentage of students attending college was between 14 and 18. I was expecting to see the percentage of students attending college to rise as the class size decreased, and the opposite as the class size increased. This, however, was not the case. The more interesting takeaway was when I added in the data containing the percentage of students coming from economically disadvantaged homes. This seemed to be a much better metric in determining college attendance. As shown by the color variation, students from more economically disadvantaged homes had a much lower rate of college attendance. Perhaps the State of Massachusetts could use this knowledge to reallocate resources and implement programs that aim at providing additional support towards less-advantaged students that encourages college attendance.

Finally, I provided the department of education with the performance of school districts when it comes to 4th grade math test scores. The standardized testing in 4th grade is used as a key metric for gauging district performance and student's comprehension. The dashboard contains the results for all school districts and separates them into two groups: Proficient & Advanced and Needs Work, where the distinction between the two groups is a score of 50%. The top 5 school districts are provided below.

As always, please reach out on LinkedIn with any questions, comments, or feedback - it is always welcome! Additionally, the interactive dashboard can be found here. Thank you!