Frequently Asked Questions

The NOLA-PS Data Dashboard was created in partnership between NOLA Public Schools and New Schools for New Orleans to support NOLA-PS’ Portfolio Strategy focused on improving access to high-quality schools that meet the diverse needs and interests of families. The Dashboard took over two years to develop and was informed by collaborative iteration, feedback, and beta testing with NOLA-PS, NSNO, school leaders, and school data experts.

The Dashboard is a publicly available tool focused on providing reliable, relevant, and relatable data for District decisionmakers, school and charter org leaders, and system partner and research orgs. While the dashboard was designed with these three groups in mind, we believe the Dashboard will be helpful and informative to all users.

The Data Dashboard was developed alongside other NOLA-PS-driven data reports that seek to share important data with the public on an annual basis, such as the current Five Year Portfolio Plan and the forthcoming Annual School Quality Profiles, which will focus on providing detailed data on schools to parents and families.

The dashboard is WCAG 2 AA compliant, uses high-contrast colors, and contains text descriptions of each graph that can be read using screen readers. Users can also use a keyboard to navigate through the dashboard without the need for a mouse.

The dashboard is equipped with Google Translate, which allows users to translate content into over 100 languages.

Many sections of the Dashboard rely on publicly-available data published by the state, which is not available until summer or the following school year.

The Dashboard is updated regularly—at least four times per year—typically within about a week of the state’s release of new public data.

Please refer to the blog for updates on new data releases.

Here are a few circumstances where a school may have less than a full data set:

• In some cases, LDOE does not report or does not provide NOLA-PS with data for Type 2 schools and alternative schools.
• Schools that newly opened at the beginning of the current school year do not yet have enough data to support a profile. These schools will have a profile in the summer, when LEAP and enrollment data from the current school year are updated in the profiles.
• Schools that opened after the 2019-20 school year will have one or more missing years of data for the years before the school opened.
• When the number of students behind a particular data point is too small to avoid student privacy concerns (generally, less than 10 students, less than 5%, or greater than 95%), the data point is “suppressed” to either show as no data, or by rounding the data point to <5% or >95%.

Please sign up for the Dashboard’s newsletter, and we will alert you about data updates or other important news related to the data dashboard.

The Dashboard’s How-To Page includes a list of other online data sources that provide information and data on public schools in New Orleans.

Please send a message through the Dashboard’s Feedback Form describing the error in detail.

Please send a message through the Dashboard’s Feedback Form describing the suggestion in detail.