[Open-education] Open Government Data: Helping Parents to find the Best School for their Kids

Fri Jun 13 13:37:27 UTC 2014

I have been following this discussion with great interest and thought I would add my two cents. Friends of mine received a letter discussing school performance data from their child's school, which made me think further about the discussion on this list. 

The principal pointed out that their generic, publicised (OFSTED) scores did not look as impressive as they might because they include students with special needs. The school has deliberately taken a socially inclusive approach, preferring to provide places to children with special needs, than exclude such children in order to get better looking data (which other schools are apparently doing)! They therefore provided adjusted data showing that (looking only at the non-special needs children) they are a top performing school in the borough. It is incredibly depressing that the drive to generate data to assist in 'school choice' skews the behaviour of schools into excluding students who don't make them look good - and also I think points to the problematic and political nature of this championing of 'choice' as being and end in itself. Of course I want a good school - but shouldn't all the schools be good? Isn't the idea that everyone gets a choice a myth? Spaces in good schools will never be unlimited - the opposite in fact. Don't get me started on choosing a good hospital. 

So yes as Marieke says, more engagement with data, but not just so we can 'hope to choose' good rather than bad public services.

Thanks for reading!

Leo

From: open-education [mailto:open-education-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Marieke Guy
Sent: 13 June 2014 13:46
To: open-education at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [Open-education] Open Government Data: Helping Parents to find the Best School for their Kids

Dear All,

I've just read the Open Public Service Network report from September 3013 Empowering Parents, improving accountability <http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/1529848/RSA_OPSN_EmpoweringParentsImprovingAccountability.pdf> (as recommended by Otavio). It is UK focused and but I wanted to share some insights from it as I think they support the argument that I (and others) have been trying to make about open data use going way beyond league tables and school choice.

<snip>
Despite 21 years of work on making data public, the public has not engaged well with it. Research by Fiona Millar and Gemma Wood found that parents wanted to choose schools using a much larger set of criteria than that covered by exam league tables. They concluded: "[Parents] exercise choice but within clearly understood limits; they have a strong preference for local schools and want those schools to offer good teaching, well-managed behaviour and a broad curriculum, which develops pupils intellectually, socially and emotionally."

Their conclusion was that parents need information more regularly and much more of it. This includes information on teaching quality, and the progress on particular groups of pupils. Millar and Wood stressed that parents wanted much better information to understand the progress of their own child in school.

Millar and Wood's analysis highlights the dangers of overemphasising the role of school choice as the main driver
of parental interest in information about their children's schools. It is equally important as contextual information for parents and children wanting to understand their own or their child's educational progress.
</snip>

They also talk about the need to assess staff and pupil attitudes through surveys and how this can be integrated with data sets.

As Otavio says : "Regarding the debate over school performance data versus the best for each individual child, again the issue is not about open data itself but the evaluation methods for learning that are used so far. Cognitive or not-cognitive ? What type of human being we need in our society ?"

Ultimately we need more engagement with data.

Marieke

On 08/06/2014 15:16, T. Idriss TINTO wrote: 

Hi,
In Burkina Faso, we just opened our open data portal (data.gov.bf). The open data team of the government have worked with civil society and some start-up to realise a pilot project that consist on visualizing on a map the primary schools of a municipality. In addition, some important indicators for us in Burkina were presente. those indicators can help parents choose the best school for their children, investors to choose the better place to build à school, or the government itself to measure the impact of its actions. Our web app help to answer to questions like:
- Does the school have a canteen?
- Does the school have a latrine?
- Does the school have a water point?
- Does the school have an association of parents?
But also, we have information on success rates in examinations, the number of classes, the number of teachers, the number of girls and boys, the geo-localisation of the school, and we also displayed a picture of the school.

At the Open Data forum that was held from June 5 to 6, not only the ministry of education, but also all the participants wanted the project to be extended to the whole country.
The App will be online soon.
Regards

Le 04/06/2014 17:15, Otavio Ritter a écrit :

	Pat, let me tell a simple story of open data impact different from traditional league tables. This is from Brazil where I live.

	School census here collects data about violence in school area (like drug traffic or other risks to pupils). Based on an open data platform developed to navigate through the census, it was possible to see that, in a specific Brazilian state, 35% of public schools had drug traffic near the schools. This fact created a pressure in the local government to create a public policy and a campaign to prevent drug use among students: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.484468108297027.1073741826.273872446023262&type=3

	So in a nutshell, open data in education has a huge potential in my opinion, much more than facilitate choosing a school. 
	In this example, I believe it helped save lifes.

	Regards

	Otavio

	On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Pat Lockley <patrick.lockley at googlemail.com> wrote:

	"The elitism comes in when the data says this school is better, and to come to this school you need to buy a 200,000 pound house. Tie that into knowing your school isn't very good and something like declaration theory (if you think you're going to fail, you're more likely to fail) then the openness is counter-intuitive. "

	I'm confused here. So the other option is not knowing that certain schools are better than your local school? Surely knowing about the situation can lead to change? Maybe your argument is about self-fulfilling prophecies? I have children in the UK school system and am well aware that there are no easy answers. 

	--------------------

	We know schools are better though, we know Eton is better than almost everywhere. We've league tables today that tell us Cambridge is best (shock horror). If we feel the educational system should be comprehensive (apologies for England and Wales terms), which is logically an equitable, "open" system, then the data is more neutral? If schools are competing with each other, or having competition engineered for them, then the data isn't benign. If the data was for example - successful teaching approaches - then the sharing of that would offer a benefit to anyone who chooses to use it (a bit like OER). 

	Lets consider Chepstow, small town, half inside Wales, half inside England. There are no league tables in Wales. Do the Welsh suffer due to this? Are their schools worse? Does a broader goal of social cohesion override a desire for individual access to data? The best schools in the UK are usually faith schools, and we have people faking a faith to get in, and I'm pretty sure the data on god existing is open. We also know a lot of social division and problems are caused by communities failing to integrate. Was it Brighton that has a lottery for school places to try and remove this problem?

	So it isn't not knowing, but more that when the data / knowledge is quantised and compartmentalised (unless, all data is open) and so, when treated in isolation doesn't look into wider issues which are explicitly related.

	Woods and trees I guess. 

	On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:58 PM, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org> wrote:

	Hi Pat,

	Hmmm....

	"The elitism comes in when the data says this school is better, and to come to this school you need to buy a 200,000 pound house. Tie that into knowing your school isn't very good and something like declaration theory (if you think you're going to fail, you're more likely to fail) then the openness is counter-intuitive. "

	I'm confused here. So the other option is not knowing that certain schools are better than your local school? Surely knowing about the situation can lead to change? Maybe your argument is about self-fulfilling prophecies? I have children in the UK school system and am well aware that there are no easy answers. 

	However open data can make for positive change. As Ottavio says "open education data helps a qualified debate by different actors that otherwise would not have access to this information restricted to school burocreacies"

	I think Ottavio's questions are very pertinent:

	Data - "But how they can be used to promote equity ? How they can be used to advance learning ? How they can be used to foster more collaboration within school clusters instead of more competition ? The data is there and how it can be used to defend these agendas?"

	These are what matter to those of us interested in open data. Exploration around these is where the potential lays.

	Thanks

	Marieke

	On 04/06/2014 15:38, Pat Lockley wrote: 

	Quoting 

	"Enabling parents to make choices about schools seems to me to be a good thing. We are not just talking about better academic schools but more appropriate schools (ones that support particular student needs with regard to academic ability, special needs, religion, disability, possible vocation etc.) I totally understand that league tables have in the past caused hysteria, but much of this is to do with media interpretation. Surely more data and more eyes on that data can bring us a more objective perspective. Data is not elitist, it is a tool. The elitism element comes in when people cannot interpret that data or have access to it. This means more tools to aid data interpretation, more training in data skills and more open data. Opening up data is to me an essential part of opening up education."

	The elitism comes in when the data says this school is better, and to come to this school you need to buy a 200,000 pound house. Tie that into knowing your school isn't very good and something like declaration theory (if you think you're going to fail, you're more likely to fail) then the openness is counter-intuitive. 

	The reliance on many eyes, or many people, or civic action is also based on people having the time to do it. If you have the time to use the data, or can pay someone to do it for you, then you can benefit from it. 

	If the public policy was "all data open" then that's fine, but it isn't applied holistically, or consistently. Schools have league tables, but not say Army Battalions, Bus Drivers, trade missions, bank binus data, etc (and the chance it isn't without bias and that some of those biases aren't political is really slim). Voting as change is convenient if you think the lib dems stood for tripling tuition fees, it took an FOI request to access the Rothschild report on loan book selling (open?) and given the current system is costing more than the old system - it is likely openness is not going to easily happen with this data.

	Contrast with an OER, everyone can, crudely, access it should they so with (with chronological implications above respected too). That is, to me, a very different thing. 

	I think what lacks from most openness is a sense almost of something akin to jurisprudence in how openness is developed as a concept. There is a quote from Blackstone about the law - "those entering a system surrender some liberty in doing so", and it seems innately openness isn't win win for everyone. Question then is how you reduce the negative impact of it. 

	On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org> wrote:

	Hi Pat and Terry,

	Thanks for your contributions here. They've given me a lot of food for thought and I will look in to some of the points you make in more detail when I have time. 

	For example Terry - your post on schools being locked shut is a good resource for the Friday Chat question I posted last week 'Is traditional education not open?' - maybe I'll repost on Friday ;-)

	Anyway I just wanted to share my gut reaction to your comments about this particular use of open data in education. 

	Terry says: "Surely, surely open education should be about far more than just using performance data to try to get our kids into a better school than our less well informed neighbours."

	And my answer to this would be: Yes, yes it is, and there is so much more we can do with it, but open data is by it's very nature open and available for people to use in anyway they see fit. This is one interesting approach with huge amounts of potential.

	The open definition states (and this is referenced in the handbook).
	"A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike." 

	This then means it can be used for good, and for bad, and for commercial exploitation. 

	Enabling parents to make choices about schools seems to me to be a good thing. We are not just talking about better academic schools but more appropriate schools (ones that support particular student needs with regard to academic ability, special needs, religion, disability, possible vocation etc.) I totally understand that league tables have in the past caused hysteria, but much of this is to do with media interpretation. Surely more data and more eyes on that data can bring us a more objective perspective. Data is not elitist, it is a tool. The elitism element comes in when people cannot interpret that data or have access to it. This means more tools to aid data interpretation, more training in data skills and more open data. Opening up data is to me an essential part of opening up education.

	You might find it interesting to read about what other countries such as Holland <http://education.okfn.org/open-education-holland/>  and Tanzania <http://education.okfn.org/open-education-tanzania/>  are doing in this area.

	In UK (where I am based) the ODI Data Challenge <https://hackpad.com/Education-Open-Data-Challenge-kLW3ZeR98lj>  mentioned by Ed has supported the development of some really great apps built on open education data. The expression 'the best thing to done with your data will be thought of by someone else' certainly holds true here. 

	So, to use one of my personal much overused phrases, "all possibilities still exist"!

	The matter of marketisation of learning is something for another day, but for me it's a shifting area, especially when you think about countries outside the global south.

	Anyway thanks again for your comments. Always great to hear.

	Marieke

	On 04/06/2014 12:47, Pat Lockley wrote: 

	hear hear 

	And this is what I was going to say re Friday's chat. To me a lot of the open data / open access arguments around openness are a lot more neo-liberal / neo-con. So when we say traditional education, do we mean before league tables? Or before licensing? Or before openness? 

	As an experiment, contrast our "Open" (if that thing exists) with Corporate Openness (say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil) and then perhaps tie this to citzens united and the openness of lobbying organisations. 

	Paraphrasing this quote "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

	Because if we have a public openness and then allow a corporate "closed" then the benefit of the openness looks to me like it is lost, or worst, has the negative outcomes you'd expect to have once neo-liberal competition kicks in. 

	On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Terry Loane <terryloane at aol.com> wrote:

	For me there is a huge irony here. 

	The very concept of open education is surely that people should be "free to use, reuse, and redistribute [resources]" (to quote from: http://booktype.okfn.org/open-education-handbook/_draft/_v/1.0/what-is-open/) Now this is the very opposite of a market approach to distributing goods and services. Marketisation of learning runs counter to open education because it is has to involve an assumption of privilege for those who access a particular resource/institution, which by definition will be scarce (e.g. an expensive textbook or an over-subscribed school.) The first paragraph of the quotation from Radu Cucos is a text-book, neo-liberal rationale for the market approach to schooling:

	"Each country has its own school market, if education is considered as a product in this market. Perfect information about products is one of the main characteristics of competitive markets. From this perspective, giving parents the opportunity to have access to information about schools characteristics will contribute to the increase in the competitiveness of the schools market. Educational institutions will have incentives to improve their performance in order to attract more students."

	Do we really believe that the idea of using 'open data' to ensure that our kids attend a better school than the ones next door who do not have access to such data is what open education should be about? Do we really believe the last sentence of the above quotation: "Educational institutions will have incentives to improve their performance in order to attract more students"? (The evidence in the UK is that publication and fetishizing of league tables can have a detrimental effect on learning because it focuses the attention of the institution on improving performance data rather than providing the best for each individual child.)

	I am also struck by the irony of using 'open data' to choose a school, because schools are such 'closed' institutions, in just about every sense of the word - I have blogged bout this recently here: http://terryloane.typepad.com/reallylearn/2014/03/why-are-schools-locked-shut-most-of-the-time.html

	Surely, surely open education should be about far more than just using performance data to try to get our kids into a better school than our less well informed neighbours.

	Terry Loane

	On 03/06/2014 16:02, Marieke Guy wrote:

		There is a great post on the Open Government Partnership blog about using open government data to help parents find the best school.
		http://www.opengovpartnership.org/blog/radu-cucos/2014/06/03/open-government-data-helping-parents-find-best-school-their-kids

		The post, by Radu Cucos from Moldova, lists several apps from different countries that have been built on government data related to education and education institutions. I'll be adding these to the Open Education Handbook <http://booktype.okfn.org/open-education-handbook/_draft/_v/1.0/open-data-use-cases/> .

		He concludes by saying:

		"Open data on schools has great value not only for parents but also for the educational system in general. Each country has its own school market, if education is considered as a product in this market. Perfect information about products is one of the main characteristics of competitive markets. From this perspective, giving parents the opportunity to have access to information about schools characteristics will contribute to the increase in the competitiveness of the schools market. Educational institutions will have incentives to improve their performance in order to attract more students. 

		While adopting the Open Data Initiative policy in the education field has advantages for everybody - parents, schools and state authorities, it falls to governments to take the leading role in promoting Open Data. First of all, governments have to make sure that data on schools is being publicly released and regularly updated. Second, state institutions have to incentivize developers to create innovative apps. Third, governments have to increase demand for educational apps by raising awareness, lowering the costs for Open Data apps accessibility and decreasing the costs of accessing additional sources and information about schools."

		I'd be interested in hearing more about this from a country perspective. Anyone got any interesting use cases to share?

		We plan to have a community session on 'What has open data got to do with education' during June - details to follow.

		Marieke

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		Marieke Guy
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