by Joseph
Hawkins
If
you go to the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) public website and
attempt to find Excel files—real data which can be “played” with—you will find nothing. All you will find are Portable Document Format files, commonly
referred to as PDFs or Adobe files.
I
have always advocated for access to real data. Why not? If taxpayers are
supporting a data-driven school district—and this concept comes out of MCPS Superintendent
Jerry Weast’s mouth every 10 seconds—then surely we cannot be afraid of sharing
data. Shouldn’t a useful document such as Schools
at a Glance exists as an Excel file?
Click here to see Schools at a
Glance:
But
instead of focusing on why MCPS always says no to public requests for real data
or informs the requester that it will cost a zillion dollars to create data,
let’s visit three large public school districts’ public websites and see what
real data they offer up to the public.
The
Chicago Public Schools provides
users with a rich variety of downloadable Excel files. My two favorite
files—the Advanced Placement (AP) results file which provides rich details for
all city high schools (including race/ethnicity information) and the National
Student Clearinghouse results file. Isn’t Superintendent Weast out and about
bragging on the MCPS Clearinghouse data? Why not share? Click here to see why
Chicago is my kind of data town:
For
each school in its system, the Miami-Dade
County Public Schools provide in downloadable Excel files basic enrollment
data, attendance and mobility rates, and graduation and dropout rates. Most of
this information is the data found in the MCPS Schools at a Glance document. Miami-Dade also provides an Excel for
on performance measures from 2003 through 2010. Click here to see what Miami
provides:
The
New York City Public Schools are not
as data friendly as Chicago or Miami, but they provide access to some Excel
files. If nothing else, they underscore the possibilities and the spirit behind
being data friendly. Click here to see what
New York City provides:
When
it comes to real data, PDFs are never the starting point but rather an end
point. Data people know this!
A
document like the MCPS Schools at a
Glance clearly resides first as data, either as one huge Excel file or
multiple Excel files or in some database that can create and export data formatted
as Excel files. Regardless, the data in those files can be manipulated and
“played” with—one is not able to play with information in PDFs without a lot of
labor devoted to reformatting and reentering information.
It
seems to me that MCPS could place on its public website Schools at a Glance—as well as other data files (e.g., AP results,
National Student Clearinghouse results)—in file formats that are data-friendly.
And when that happens, I promise I’ll stop asking Show me your data!
