Leicester Public Schools Information and Data Portal: Research and Recommendations

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to develop a strategy for the creation of a multifaceted portal to help with the organization and dissemination of information about the Leicester public school district. The functionality of this portal is to provide comparative financial, demographic, and academic data to other relative school districts in the area, both for the parents’ and for the city’s reference. It will be an examination into the best practices for creating a portal, both technological and aesthetic recommendations, as well as research into the value the publication of this data would provide for the parents of current and prospective students as well as the district and the greater town. As for a basic overview, this project will examine four comparable Massachusetts districts’ data, Milbury, Abington, Avon, and Uxbridge, and construct some visual representations of comparable statistics. The key areas to be compared are: for financial, the total budget, per pupil expenditure, and Chapter 70 money; for academic, MCAS percentage proficient and advanced, SAT scores, and number of AP tests taken; and for demographic, graduation rate, attendance rate, and dropout rate. The secondary part of the project is a best practices recommendation which will be comprised of two parts: technological tools and aesthetics/usability, which will be supported with a discussion about the value this type of portal would have for a school district

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