Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Introduction to NYC School Survey

Since 2007, the NYC School Survey is conducted opening to parents, teachers, and students. The survey result is comprised of statistics on survey responses from students, parents, and teachers, and the survey could be a important tool in understanding the current education status quo from three perspectives and multiple aspects.

Examples of survey administered to parents and students in year 2019, which is the year of our project data:
https://https://infohub.nyced.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/parent-survey_1015.pdf

https://infohub.nyced.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/student-survey_1010.pdf

1.2 Our goal in this project

Interested in how things could be quantified in social sciences, we thought the dataset could provide us with some interesting insights into the use of data science in education. Additionally, we noticed that the survey is distributed annually, and the data is collected from multiple perspectives. Thus, the survey data could be an insightful instrument in summarizing the current status quo of education and in promoting improvements in education. In general, we thought it’s an interesting dataset in helping us to explore the interdisciplinarity of data science while learning more about the education actuality in New York City.

By looking into the NYC School Quality Reports that reflect the opinion of parents, teachers and students, we wish to be able to answer the questions listed below:

  • What are the top 10 schools with the highest survey performance? What are their characteristics?

  • What is the distribution of performance over the six components (Collaborative Teachers Score, Effective School Leadership Score, Rigorous Instruction Score, Supportive Environment Score, Strong Family Community Ties Score, Trust Score)? What does it imply?

  • How do parents, teachers, and students rate the education experience respectively? Do teachers and students have a consensus on their survey scores? And what about the relationship between students’ and parents’ responses?