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transparency
August 28, 2009
What datasets should the Bloomberg administration open up?
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is offering to open up. Photo via Wikimedia commons.
Responding to the national push for more transparent government, the Bloomberg administration is opening up some of its datasets for easier public consumption. The only question is what data the city will throw up on the new Web site.
The city is taking suggestions starting Monday, and the nonprofit that houses GothamSchools, The Open Planning Project, is part of the push to send those in. We will be helping TOPP fill out what are called RFEI’s, or requests for expressions of interest, this coming Monday.
With the deadline breathing down our necks, on our staycation no less!, we need your help. Our wish list includes information on outside contracts the Department of Education holds, school-by-school budget documents, and school accountability information organized in easy-to-search Excel spreadsheets rather than individual PDF’s.
What should we add? Please name names of specific documents, and please don’t be shy with ideas. Info on how to submit your own RFEI is here.
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August 28th, 2009 1:11 pm
The accountability data (statewide tests, report cards, survey results) already gets put out on one big spreadsheet, it’s just nearly impossible to find on the labrynthine board of ed site or the even worse state ed dept site.
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August 28th, 2009 1:34 pm
Yeah, good luck with that. I’m sure Bloomberg and Klein - control freaks that they are - will throw open the DOE databases for you to peruse.
But even if they do, bulls@#t stats remain bulls#$t - the higher graduation rates, the higher state and city test scores, the lower crime rate in schools are all the result of manipulation and cheating. The grad rates go up when “credit recovery” programs hand students semester credits for writing one page “reports.” Test scores go up when you decrease the number of correct responses needed for a passing score and when you have those tests graded in-house by the very teachers who are being pressured to have students improve on tests under the eyes of assistant principals and principals whose very jobs exist only as long as the scores go up every year. And the crime rates go down when schools just stop reporting crimes (have to wonder if the “miracle” decrease in crime across the city isn’t a similar fudging of numbers by the precinct captains under the same stat scrutiny from Bloomberg as principals…)
You know, if some intrepid journalists actually did some investigative reporting of the test scores, the grad rates and the crime rates rather than just transcribing the DOE and City Hall press releases and publishing them as “news,” maybe you wouldn’t need to beg Mayor Mike to open up his databases to scrutiny. Maybe then you’d know his stats are all bulls#$t.
But then again, that would take actual work and it’s some much easier to just transcribe the p.r. releases and go home and write your novel about an intrepid reporter who speaks truth to power rather than disseminating the lies of the powerful to the powerless.
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August 28th, 2009 5:10 pm
* 2007, 2008 PSAT data by school
* all ATS Reports
* School Support Organization, Tweed budgets by title
* Grades 5-8 L 1-4 by zip code
* 2007, 2008, 2009 Open Market Transfers by sending school and receiving school
* Rubber Room occupants by gender, race, school and years of experience
*2007, 2008, 2009 teacher U-ratings by school
*Student suspensions, principal and superintendents, by school, gender and race
will keep folks busy for a year ot so …
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August 28th, 2009 6:11 pm
There are actually two opportunities here. The first is the Mayor’s Big Apps program which will let application and web developers build apps on top of city data. That program will be done with data that’s currently available or with data that the city sees enough demand for. Those “demands” (RFEIs) are due on September 1st. The other opportunity is the City Council legislation, Int 991, that would mandate ALL city data to be made available in raw form online. That will be voted on in early fall. Int 991 is like an update to FOIL for the 21st century since technology can now allow instant access to raw digital public data. Please read the post for more information on this effort and how you can be involved: http://topplabs.org/civichacker/2009/08/help-open-the-big-apple/
This opportunity really needs the public to show support.
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August 28th, 2009 6:31 pm
Here’s a pretty good emphasis on the importance of open data: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_at_state.html
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August 28th, 2009 10:28 pm
How about some data on District 75? Performance? Graduation rates? Demographics? I’d also like to see some data on YABC programs, evening high schools, and other alternative high school programs.
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August 29th, 2009 1:24 am
All failing high school grades that were changed into passing ones, broken down by school. You’ll want to know when the course was taken, the date the change was made, date the student graduated, and teacher’s name (I believe teachers are supposed to be notified when their grades are changed).
Also, (why doesn’t my return button work on this blog?) lateness data would be very interesting - how many students late for school, how many late for class.
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August 29th, 2009 1:42 pm
Bloomberg, a billionaire with a mega-media world wide who also has an engineering degree, will ensure that the data that will be produced for the public will use the fuzzy-numbers that will display the fuzzy-data that made him the fuzzy-education mayor. Remember he is the media! He has convinced many people that he can make the number 17 look like number 1, especially since many New Yorkers have innumeracy. The data should be given to an independent board who are expert statisticians and metricians and allow them to present the data in a reader-friendly format for all to see and understand. Moreover, here’s Bloomberg’s chance to provide the public with transparency of NYC government if he has nothing to hide or fudge.
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August 31st, 2009 10:23 am
Echo that on the ATS (Automate the Schools) data, which includes what classes teachers are actually assigned to teach in schools. That would be a huge help
The second is the School Report Cards. The state puts these together, but DOE manages the ones for NYC. They are not available in Excel spreadsheet form so you have to open each school report individually to compare data. Also, DOE has inexplicably taken down all the reports before 2004. What happened to all that historical data?? It’s nothing to keep it available.
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August 31st, 2009 8:34 pm
what’s the deadline? its not clear. I have lots of ideas!
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August 31st, 2009 10:19 pm
Leonie — Tomorrow, Tuesday! We’ll be sharing our list with our colleagues at TOPP around noon, and the city’s deadline is 4 p.m.
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September 1st, 2009 9:54 am
Data on discipline proceedings — especially suspension hearings, suspensions, and in-school police action — need to be raced citywide and by school. The state actually had data on the race of suspended students at one point, which they had to have obtained from BOE/DOE, but the City never provides it locally.
John Beam
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September 1st, 2009 10:19 am
Here’s some stuff that would be interesting to see:
1- the “blue books” in excel for the last eight years, to check out the enrollment trends citywide, by district and school.
2- the underlying data that the education statistics of the MMR are based upon, including their reporting of overcrowding (which differs from the what’s reported in the blue book);
3- discharge data disaggregated by discharge code, by school and by economic status, gender and race/ethnicity for the last six years — also the discharge data of any kind for the 2007-8 school year (which still has not been released.)
4- the formula that the teacher data reports is based upon, including the sources of the input data on which they rely.
Are you going to share your request when it is made?
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September 1st, 2009 10:44 am
I don’t think anyone has mentioned this, but I also think they should provide separate data for the programs within large schools. Right now, I belie ve they are just lumped into the larger school data, so we don’t know if certain programs are skewing the large school numbers. (Unless, of course, I’ve missed some way to find this data on the NYCDOE website. If I have, someone please fill me in!)
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September 28th, 2009 4:03 pm
school by school data on full inclusion of students with special needs
school by school data on Collaborative Team Teaching students and their success rate on
state and city tests
number of students with special needs participating in extra cirriccular activities at schools, i.e
sports, music, arts, etc
number of students graduating with an IEP diploma
number of students currently tracked to recieve an IEP diploma
number of students tracked to receive a general education diploma
number of students receiving a general ed diploma requiring passing grade of 55 or better
number of students receiving a general ed diploma requiring a passing grade of 65 or over
number of students with modifided cirriculum on thier IEP
most often requested areas of modificationsnumber of Impartial Hearings requested
number of impartials held
number of impartials decided in favor of the parent
number of impartials decided in favor of the school districtnumber of mediation meetings
number of mediation meetings that resulted in a resolutionnumber of students using assistive devices
I could go on and on adnd on and on
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Mapping the Budget Cuts
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