The purpose of this project is to analyze a city school district's standardized testing data to gain insights and key metrics. This includes analyzing the data on student funding and scores by aggregating testing data and showing trends in school performances. The school district's school board and superintendent will use the analysis to make decisions about school budgets and priorities.
The school board has notified that the reading and math grades for Thomas High School ninth graders have been altered. Therefore, the math and reading scores for Thomas High School will be replaced with "NaNs" while keeping the rest of the data for the high school. After making this change, the school district analysis will be repeated to see how this change affected the overall analysis. This analysis will then be shared to the school district and superintendent to have a more accurate analysis of all the schools within the district.
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How is the district summary affected?
The district summary after dropping 9th grader standardized test scores for Thomas High School slightly affected the metrics of the distract summary. After making this adjustment, the average math score decreased very slightly from 79% to 78.9%. The average reading scored just about the same at 81.9%. The total student percentage passing math decreased from 75% to 74.8% and the percentage passing reading decreased from 86% to 85.7%. Finally, the overall passing percentage went from 65% to 64.9%. The affects to the district summary were not very significant but in general brought down the scores averaging and passing rates for both subject.
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How is the school summary affected?
The school summary was only affected the for metrics for Thomas High Schools. All the other school’s metrics were not affected in the school summary data frame. Below is a list of how the numbers/percentages changed after taking out the ninth graders scores for Thomas High School.
Before Change After Change Avg. Math Score: 83.4% Avg. Math Score: 83.4% Avg. Reading Score: 83.8% Avg. Reading Score: 83.9% % Passing Math: 93.3% % Passing Math: 93.2% % Passing Reading: 97.3% % Passing Reading: 97.0% % Overall Passing: 90.9% % Overall Passing: 90.6% -
How does replacing the ninth graders' math and reading scores affect Thomas High School's performance relative to other schools?
Replacing the ninth graders' standardized test scores affected Thomas High School's performance especially in their percentage passing reading and math as well as the overall passing percentage. Relative to other schools, Thomas High School stayed the same as they still place second for top 5 schools based on overall passing percentage.
Data frame showing top 5 schools based on overall passing percentage:
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How does replacing the ninth-grade scores affect the following?
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Math and reading scores by grade:
Replacing the ninth-grade scores did not affect the math and reading scores by grade. One visual difference is that for Thomas High School 9th grade, "nan" is seen as all test scores were taken out.
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Scores by school spending:
Only the ($630 -644) spending per student category range was affected when analyzing scores for spending ranges on students. The change was not significant or consistent. Below are the differences in percentages for before and after for the ($630 - $644) spending range per student.
Before Change After Change Avg. Math Score: 78.52% Avg. Math Score: 78.50 (Decrease) Avg. Reading Score: 81.62 Avg. Reading Score: 81.64 (Increase) % Passing Math: 73.48% % Passing Math: 73.46 (Decrease) % Passing Reading: 84.39% % Passing Reading: 84.32% (Decrease) % Overall Passing: 62.86% % Overall Passing: 62.78% (Decrease) -
Scores by school size:
Replacing the ninth graders scores had no effect on the scores based on schools grouped into sizes.
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Scores by school type:
There was no effect on the scores based on schools grouped into district or charter types.
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Overall, replacing the ninth-grade standardized test scores for Thomas high school had minor effects in some of the results. As seen above, there was not a drastic change for the metrics in the summary data frame but in general decreased the scores and passing percentages. For the school summary, only the Thomas High Schools' metrics were affected but they continue to be in 2nd place for percentage overall passing. Finally, for the metrics based on categories such as score by school size and scores by school type, there was not impact at all. However, metrics on school spending changed for the ($630-$644) category. Thomas High School's school data affected this category because their per student budget is $638.
One key takeaway from this analysis is that the results after making the changes to Thomas High School's ninth graders were very minor. This signifies that the results are still accurately capturing the overall analysis of the school district's standardized tests scores. The school board and superintendent can now use this analysis to make decisions on the school district regarding funding and priorities.