I believe this shows all test takers, both first-time and retakers, I wish they would separate them.

The first map below shows the percent of all test takers who were proficient (level 4 or 5) on the Grade 10 English/Language Arts Exam for the 2020-2021 academic year. The second map shows the percent of economically disadvantaged students who were proficient on the same exam during the same period. The all-student map includes the economically disadvantaged students. The definition of economically disadvantaged is not immediately clear from the data. The definition was not included in the “definitions” section of the website. There is a separate measure, which includes more students, for “FARMS”-(free-and-reduced priced meal.” I assume that it is students “eligible” for free-and-reduced priced meals, but that is not specified either. The third map shows the percentage of non-economically disadvantaged students who were proficient on the exam.

I put these maps together to see if there were schools that had high test scores for the full student body but were less successful for economically disadvantaged students. The problem I ran into, which isn’t really shown in the maps, is that the schools with really high test scores overall, like Severa Park, have only a few economically disadvantaged students overall.

All Students

Economically Disadvantaged Students

Non-economically Disadvantaged

I found a new dataset today. It shows the number and percentage of students that are promoted in high school every year.

The map shows the percentage of 2020-2021 grade 9 students that were not promoted to grade 10.

Played around with showing Non-FARMS High School graduates who earn a college degree by age 25. The Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center publishes the data as a percentage of high school graduates that enroll in college. I used their published numbers to see the total high school graduates. I was originally interested in FARMs students, but the data was repressed for most of the schools.

As always this is just me exploring the data that is available. I am trying to make sense of the data and be able to remember the information.

I am exploring using a map to display college enrollment data for Anne Arundel County. Unfortunately, I only have a shapefile that includes Crofton HS, which is a new school, so the boundaries do not reflect the boundaries at the time. The are other specialized high schools in the county that are not reflected in the data. Since I haven’t done mapping in a while I had to remember how to upload the data, but I figured it out pretty quickly.

I have been semi-regularly recording the active COVID-19 cases for students and staff of the Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPA). Recently AACPS has been updating their data daily, but life has gotten in the way, so I have not remembered to check the data daily and they do not publish the archived data.

As of October 13, 2021, the number of student active cases was the highest on October 1, 2021, when there were 237 active cases. The higher number of staff cases I recorded was on September 27, 2021, when there were 33 active cases. The number of active cases seems to be trending downward. I hope the trend continues. I

I plan to calculate the percentage of students and staff with active cases so I can compare the data, but I have not yet found the time to find the data with the number of students and staff for this year. Until I do that calculation I do not know if a higher percentage of students or staff have had active cases.

Data Notes From Anne ArunDel County Pubic Schools

1. The tables on this page reflect positive cases, confirmed by testing, with an onset date  of September 8, 2021, or later that have been made known to Anne Arundel County      Public Schools. Schools/Offices with zero student or staff cases do not appear in the tables. The data also includes cases of COVID-like symptoms in which a      person is not tested for a period of 48 hours after onset of symptoms, and probable cases, which occur when an individual with a COVID-like symptoms is found to have close contact with someone who is COVID-19 positive. Such cases are treated as if they are positive for COVID-19 in terms of identification of close contacts and potential exposures. Cases that appear on this dashboard and are later determined to be false positives or the like will be deleted in subsequent updates.

2. An “active case” is one in which the individual who tested positive is still under 10-day quarantine.

3. A positive case, COVID-like symptoms case, or probable case does not mean the individual exposed others at school or work, or that the individual contracted the virus at school or work.

4. Students enrolled in virtual-only learning and who are not part of any extracurricular activities are not included in this data.

5. Due to differences in reporting methodology, this information may not match the data presented by the Maryland Department of Health.

Currently Quaranting

This chart shows the number of students and staff currently quarantining according to Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) COVID-19 data dashboard. The dashboard is currently being updated daily, but I have not been diligent about collecting the data daily; therefore there is data missing from some days. So far, according to the data I recorded, the number of students quarantining peaked at 1,756 on September 29, 2021. On that date, there were 40 staff members quarantining, which was also a high point.

Below I have copied what AACPS says about who is included in the number of students and staff currently quarantining.

The number of current quarantine cases above includes those who are COVID-19 positive through confirmed testing, those who have been designated as having COVID-like symptoms, and those who are probable cases as defined below on this page. It also includes those who have been determined to be close contacts of those persons and who are not fully vaccinated. The data includes cases traced in schools as well as those involving AACPS students that are traced in the community and have no immediate impact on schools.

Anne Arundel County Public Schools

THoughts about the Chart

I like that datawrapper provides several options for displaying the date at the bottom of a chart. Because I have taken foreign languages and lived abroad, I have used both the day/month/year date formate and the month/day/year formate. I find it sort of confusing switching between the format conventions, so I'm happy that there is an option that eliminates that potential confusion by using the month abbreviations as such "Sep" or "Oct" with the date number above. I find this date format easier to read.

I used the straight number of students and staff currently quarantining for this chart because I was interested in the actual numbers. I could also show the percentage of students and staff currently quarantining. I would need to find an accurate count of students and staff for the current school year to make that chart.

Keeping up with the COVID-19 data published by Anne Arundel County Public Schools on an individual school basis is not really sustainable because it is currently being published daily. The data can not be downloaded so it has to be transcribed by hand. So I am looking at some other ways to visualize the data that might be less time-intensive, and still informative. My primary goals are to 1) learn how to build various data visualizations, and 2) explore the utility of various data visualizations. Maintaining a data dashboard, unless I am curious about the data that day is not my primary purpose.

One idea is to look at the cumulative COVID-19 cases by both students and staff on a daily basis. I did not think to capture this data earlier, so I have a few days of data missing. I also have missing days because life got in the way. It doesn’t seem hard to enter in a few data points every day until you get wrapped up in life and then you realize that you haven’t even looked at the website in a few days. I wish that they published the data in a way that I could download their archival data, but I will take what they share. The Maryland Health Department publishes their archival school outbreak data; however, their data only reflects outbreaks (as they have defined them) and is only published once a week on Wednesdays. Because of the missing data, I used the step model of lines as I think it is a more honest way to show the data.

This line chart shows the cumulative daily COVID-19 cases for students and staff for the 2021-2022 school year. The number of cases are from the Anne Arundel County Public Schools data dashboard. I have added dots for the days that I recorded the published data. There are no dots on the days that I do not record the data.

This is the September 22, 2021, update of the map that shows that total reported cases by Anne Arundel County Public Schools by feeder system. The map was last published on September 21, 2021.

According to the data published by the Anne Arundel County School System on September 22, 2021, there are 1,335 students and 29 staff currently quarantining. There are 241 active cases: 223 students and 18 staff. In total there have been 303 cases this school year.

This is the September 21, 2021, update of a previous map.

This is an update of a previous post.