README updated: November 2024
This repo hosts the R code to collect and prepare data and to build the Reading and Math SOL Test Outcomes website for exploring education inequities in Virginia.
Reading and Math SOL Test Outcomes in Virginia
We use Virginia Department of Education data on the Commonwealth’s Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments to visually illuminate the significant gaps in reading and math pass rates – between Black students as compared to their White peers, between economically disadvantaged students as compared to their more fortunate classmates, and between Hispanic students as compared to their non-Hispanic peers. Research shows that lack of reading and math proficiency have long-lasting impacts on future educational attainment, future earnings, and more. We seek to make this data easier to use for exploratory purposes, as a call to action, and hopefully, as a manner by which localities can track progress in eliminating these gaps, and working towards the goal of reading and math proficiency for ALL students.
The site is deployed using Github pages, and is designed to be modular so that each data processing and app development step is separated from another. The data processing and modeling are done in steps 1 and 2, and the applications are created in steps 3 - 5. The apps are then iframed into place on their respective html pages.