Modernizing Annual Reports on Education
For decades, AIR supported the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in developing, producing, and disseminating a range of reports, including the Digest of Education Statistics and the Condition of Education.
Although these reports are well-established in the research and policymaking communities, NCES sought ways to innovate and optimize the user’s experience when navigating the reports. Increases in the amount of data included in these reports necessitated a critical need to streamline data management processes. AIR met this need with experts in technical solutions, database management, user experience, and web design and development.
Making NCES Data More Accessible and Navigable
- Machine-Readable Tables – AIR designed a standardized machine-readable table (MRT) structure and create MRTs using web-scraping techniques.to make data from NCES’s Digest of Education Statistics easier to use with software programs—and fulfill the requirements of the Open Data Act and the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act.
- Condition of Education Web Portal – AIR made it easier for users to find the information they needed by providing support to restructure the Condition of Education. With the new structure, users can search for indicators within the topic or subgroup of interest to them due to AIR’s work. AIR’s contributions allow users to explore the data within indicators in different ways by making use of the customizable figures.
- Digest State Dashboard – AIR’s contributions to the Digest State Dashboard allows users to access state-level Digest data all in one place (instead of having to cull through dozens of individual tables). The dashboard also includes customizable figures to allow users to easily derive insights from the data that are tailored to their needs.
Creating Efficiencies to Improve NCES’s Processes
AIR created a pipeline that processes raw input files from multiple sources, cleans the content, and loads the resulting data into a database to be used for figure generation, automating the creation of the customizable data visualizations in the Condition of Education and the Digest State Dashboard. We also helped to create an automated process that simultaneously created Excel and MRT versions of Digest tables. These efforts required managing the diverse exceptions found in tables and figures and implementing solutions capable of efficiently handling these exceptions.
AIR’s technical solutions expertise increased the usability of data while also streamlining its processes. Ultimately, users benefited from a more optimized report experience.
