How does NOLA-PS handle data that could identify students?

The data dashboard publicly reports NOLA-PS student data and thus has an obligation under the federal Family Educational Rights and Policy Act (FERPA) to apply data suppression to remove identifiable information from any data releases. FERPA’s confidentiality standard prohibits the release of information that would allow a “reasonable person in the school community … to identify [an individual] within reasonable certainty.”1

In accordance with this standard, we will apply consistent suppression rules to all data featured in the dashboard. The suppression rules listed below will be applied in the order listed.

1. The student enrollment data published in the dashboard will be sourced from Fall multistats data published every year by the LDOE, and all academic data will be sourced from spring assessment results. Thus, the enrollment data are included to provide additional context about a school but should not be assumed to exactly match the student composition at the time the outcome was measured.2
2. No student counts will be published, aside from the following:
   • Demand score, for all students (not disaggregated by subgroup, as this data is not available).
   • Total enrollment over time
3. Student Demographic Data: Enrollment over time by student race/ethnicity is publicly reported by the LDOE. The dashboard will use these October 1 “multi-stat” underlying counts in the “Students by Race/Ethnicity” visual. However, no underlying counts will be displayed in the visual; only percentages will be used. All percentages <5% or >95% will be coded as “<5%” or “>95%.”
4. Student Academic Achievement Data: The dashboard uses a combination of publicly available student achievement data, along with data provided by NOLA-PS that has not been publicly reported. Student achievement data is from the spring administration of LEAP testing, so will not directly reflect the Oct. 1 student enrollment and demographic data that is also displayed in the dashboard. For student achievement data, the suppression protocol is as follows:
   • Denominators (cell sizes) fewer than 10 and their corresponding percentages will not be reported.
   • All percentages less than 5% or greater than 95% will be coded as either “<5%” or “>95%”. In addition, all School Performance Score (SPS) subcomponents for student subgroups that are less than 5 or greater than 145 will be coded as either “<5” or “>145.”