Description

Create a suite of R packages to:

1. Support policy-relevant analysis of state educational data
   
2. Develop reproducible R functions for common analytic tasks
   
3. Use an iterative development process to build, test, and refine tools
   
4. Empower state analysts and researchers to produce high-quality, replicable reports

Goal

Develop robust functionality to:

• Facilitate routine analysis
  
• Streamline standard analytic workflows
  
• Enable deeper, exploratory data investigations
  
• Generate clear, reproducible reports and presentations
  
• Provide comprehensive supporting documentation

Workflow

• R and RStudio – Programming and package development
  
• GitHub – Version control and website hosting
  
• Quarto – Website creation and dynamic report generation

Focus of the Package

• Cohort Analysis for Educational Research
  • Demographics
  • Student Mobility
  • Longitudinal Analysis (tracking cohorts over time)
  • Cross-Sectional Analysis (comparing cohorts)

Why cohortED?

• How do students move between grade levels over time?
• Who is present in one year but not the next?
• When and where do enrollment patterns shift?
• How do these trends vary across districts or subgroups?
• How does student mobility impact metrics, such as performance or graduation rates?
• How do different cohorts compare to each other over time?

Grade-to-Grade Transitions

Grouping students based on movement across adjacent grades:

• Leave - in the earlier grade but not the next
  
• Stay - in both grades
  
• Join - in the later grade but not the previous

To support measures of:

• Persistence - proportion of students who stay
  
• Churn - combined rate of students who leave or join

Looking for Your Insights

Please consider:

• What additional features or capabilities would be valuable?
• Are there any specific challenges or questions that states want addressed?
• Are there datasets that could help improve and validate the package?

Ideal Dataset

• Longitudinal Student-Level Data
  • Example: sgpData_Long from SGPdata package
  • Requires: Student ID, Grade Level, Academic Year
  • Optional Demographics, Subgroups, Performance, School/District, etc.

Current Analysis

• Data Manipulation and Cohort Construction
• Grade-to-Grade Transition Tracking
• Cohort Demographic Comparisons
• Cross-Cohort Performance Summaries
• Analysis of Mobility’s Impact on Performance

Future Analysis

• Cross-District and Cross-School Mobility
• Advanced Subgroup Analysis
• Expanded Longitudinal Cohort Tracking
• Improved Visualization of Churn and Persistence

Report Generation

Currently, reports are user-built with Modular Functions that have list output

• Updated or refined datasets
• Formatted table objects and summary statistics
• ggplot2 plots
• Auto-generated captions
• Designed to be embedded in R Markdown or Quarto

Future versions will offer pre-built templates with dynamic text and visual explanations.

Example Report

Persistent Challenges

• Designing flexible function arguments
• Creating cohesive, user-friendly functionality
• Handling data limitations
• Developing dynamic reporting capabilities

Next Steps

• Build in more functionality and analysis features
• Expand dynamic reporting capabilities
• Test with additional datasets (as available)
• Obtain feedback

Desired Feedback

• Functionality: Are there any features you think would be useful to add?
  
• Reporting: Are there any challenges from states that this package could better support?
  
• Datasets: Do you know of any datasets that can be used to test and validate the package?