Mayors' Report – associated links

• New American Foundation Atlas Great starting example for what SREB would like to accomplish
• LearnDC School Profiles

Accessible design and pathways through information

• Illinois Report Card

Dynamic PDFs that always reflect the latest data

• Urban Institute

CMS integration, data cards enable new ways to explore reports

• New York Times Charting Tool

Ability for non-technical authors to generate web-friendly charts in a house style

• DC Action for Children Data Tools

Interactive map to combine a variety of data sets

• At-Risk Funds

An exploratory data tool integrated with supporting content

• Graduation Gaps

Hands-on interaction with data to promote understanding

• Kids Count Data Center

Heterogenous data repository

• Afterschool Alliance (CCG project)

Allows exploration and comparison of state level data across a common set of metrics.

http://afterschoolalliance.org/AA3PM/national.html#c/stem/p_of_parents_report_stem_learning_opp

• RWJF State of Obesity

A clean, no frills site that offers several ways to slice into state level data. Also has special reports on ethnic disparities.

http://stateofobesity.org/

http://stateofobesity.org/disparities/

• OECD Better Life Index

The star (flower) charts for comparison are controversial, but overall the clients thinks this is a friendly and useful tool to explore country level data.

http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/

Is this the appropriate structure for the site?

Current pages:

• Should there be national overviews or city overviews only?
• The focus should be on city overviews.
• Should there be a separate tab for spotlights or should that be interwoven into the city page?
• We think a separate tab for spotlights. We want the city pages to be clean and data-driven.
• We want the system to do some work for the user. Example: While the Dallas mayor may be able to name a few cities/districts that are the same size as Dallas, he won’t know which districts have demographic or income level make ups similar to Dallas ISD. We need a system that allows him to pull other cities that are like his in a variety of ways (i.e., cities/districts that have a similar demographic make up, cities/districts that have similar spending habits/patters, cities/districts that have similar achievement). Basically-a system that can do some of the comparison work for him.
• Should there be an About the Data/ Methodology link (linked from a smaller link above the top navigation)?
• This should be somewhere, easily accessible, but we will take suggestions as to where.

Is this the appropriate user path?

Current path: This seems right for now. May change once we see content.

• Start by choosing a city (assuming audience is most interested in their own city’s data)
• The default view on the city landing page will be achievement data (assuming achievement data is priority)
• User can then choose other themes and comparisons
• User can also go to National Overviews page, Spotlights/Local Initiatives page, Explore the Data page

Do we incorporate write-ups of “state of education data” or “what matters in education data”?  Do those go on the home page or “about the data” page?

Yes, we definitely do not want to lose what we are working on for the exec summary. We’re not exactly sure where this would go—home page? A separate section? And feel the placement of this info will be driven by the content.

For example, while it may seem to naturally fit on the home page now, if the content gets too long for placement on a home page, we’ll need to move it. We would rather content drive placement and not placement limit content.

We want to increase and improve this section from what we did last year and include more comparisons, listings (i.e., top 10 cities/districts in X indicator).

Should there be a separate page for “National Overviews” of each theme?  Or should those be integrated in the “home” page?

Our focus should be city overviews. While we want to see comparisons to the national level (i.e., teacher pay in Dallas is $53,000, and that compares to the national average in this way…. Or the average across all cities in this way…. Or both), we feel those comparisons would be better throughout and in easy-to-use visuals (and/or maybe we incorporate discussions about these comparisons in the “about the data” sections talked about in the question above).

Should Spotlight Cities and Local Initiatives have their own page, or be integrated throughout the city pages?

It is very important to us that each city is able to print off a “city report” about their own city in a way that is clean, informative, and visually appealing.

What is the best way to allow users to compare cities – one comparison city at a time or multiple comparison cities?

• Providing more than one comparison city will be challenging, especially if the data is broken out in subgroups (race, socioeconomic, etc). We want a place to compare more than one city. We think that the “city data” pages can be clean and just cover one city, and then in the “Explore” section, allow the user to do more comparisons.

Other

Our External Affairs team is also interested in the shareability function - how easy it is to share and what shows up on social media when you do share.