Analysis of Student Exam Performance

TEAMWORK ● PYTHON ● TABLEAU ● DATA COLLECTION ● DATA VISUALIZATION ● DATA ANALYSIS

S u m m a r y

During the Forge Launch Academy, I worked in a two-person team to analyze how different factors (gender, race, socioeconomic status, etc.) can affect math, reading, and writing test scores. Tableau visualizations were created to present findings.

CODE 

P R E S E N T A T I O N

N o t e s :

  • GOAL: Provide some guidance and advice for students taking standardized tests to help them perform better
  • DATASET: Gives some insight into how students of various demographics perform on standardized tests
    • Fictional dataset that detailed 500 students' math, reading, and writing scores on a certain standardized test and thier respective demographics, like gender, race, parent education, etc.
  • SLIDE 6: On the Test Scores & Race graph, the groups further to the right have the highest exam scores and they slowly decrease moving left
    • Unable to determine what racial groups these specifically are, which could be for privacy reasons
  • SLIDE 10: Similar cumulative exam scores across all racial groups, but a deteriorating score from group E to A if no course was taken
  • SLIDE 11: Dataset did not share any type of indicator regarding income levels of these students, so we thought that we would be able to gain some type of understanding of this from analyzing students' lunch data
    • Two lunch categories: standard cost and free/reduced cost
    • Distribution between students with and without test prep are surprisingly similar and could be due to the fact that this is a fictional datasest and that the data was input randomly so that this is a mere coincidence, but we could also assume the possibility that there may be some type of financial assistance included in these test preparation courrses to provide somewhat more equal access to this type of help
  • RECOMMENDATIONS:
    • Encourage students to take a test prep course if offered and affordable because there are observed benefits across all groups
    • All of the demographics studied were relatively and surprisingly evenly distributed, so all students can benefit from academic support and encouragement in order to perform well on their exams
    • Schools and universities alike should consider the efficacy of standardized testing as a measure of student intelligence and academic performance as it could be a reflection of the students' personal situation and access to resources rather than their academic ability