FlowingData brings us the news of a new website built by NBC News and the Gates Foundation, along with Fathom Design (Ben Fry) that compiles the various standardized test scores and educational statistics for thousands of schools across the US. From his writeup:
I think most parents will go to the site, look up their children’s school. If it performs better than the norm they’ll smile and be satisfied. If it performs below the norm, they’ll click on the link to find out how they can do something about it. So it doesn’t need to be super exploratory.
I think the other reason for the design choice was because the same data aren’t available for all schools and districts. Under the current design, you can show viewers just what you have instead of providing a view with a bunch of missing data.
I took a look at it, and I have to admit I’m impressed. It’s simply and clean, yet full of information. Find a school, and you’re quickly presented with the critical statistics about how it performs related to other schools in the district and state, and how well students perform compared to their grade level. You get some basic interactivity, but not enough to be overwhelming or seizure-inducing, and a great amount of information in nice bite-sized chunks.
Definitely check it out.
