Open Data Index for Schools (ODIS)
Coming soon! ODIS is a free, first-of-its-kind open data resource that provides robust insights into the barriers and stressors that affect more than 23,000 high school communities across the United States.
For too long, our education system and policymakers have relied on free and reduced-price lunch as a standard indicator of “who” – in the education setting – benefits from supports, projects, and funded partnership.
ODIS seeks to change this.
Barriers and stress come in many forms for school communities. That’s why NAF, a nonprofit focused for decades on supporting school communities, has collaborated with the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management to develop the Open Data Index for Schools (ODIS) to help address this issue to better support historically marginalized school communities and the students and families within them.
A Broader Spectrum
ODIS conveys data on five areas of community barriers and stress (economic, education, health, housing, and crime) by combining 16 indicators of quality of life.
Targeted Impact
Users can compare data across the school district, city, county, and state levels for more than 23,000 public high school communities nationwide.
Accessible and Reliable Data
ODIS exclusively uses public data from reputable organizations with a national reach and an update cycle of no more than three years.
ODIS can support your work in driving change toward better long-term and quality-of-life outcomes for school communities and students.
Here are a few ways:
- School and Educational Leadership, Nonprofits, and Community Impact Organizations: ODIS can support in providing data-driven metrics on a broad spectrum of community barriers for programmatic intervention, soliciting grant funding, and strategizing the allocation and management of resources.
- Corporate and Local Employer Partners: ODIS provides targeted metrics on widespread community barriers that business partners to tackle together (for example, access to broadband internet and healthcare), and can assist in the tracking of these metrics over time.
- Policymakers: You can use ODIS to examine the impact of community and policy-based initiatives that work towards community improvement. ODIS conveys data on key areas of community barriers and stress by combining 16 indicators of quality of life; such as, unemployment rate, high school graduation rate, access to health care, and housing affordability.
- Researchers: You’ll have access to freely available, synthesized, and updated data specific to school communities, at the local level or across the nation, to facilitate trend analysis, statistical comparisons, and bridging research with community impact.
What Others Are Saying About ODIS
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"Everyone in a community has a stake in their local schools, and data at the school level can be hard to come by. The ODIS tool allows education officials, policymakers, and concerned community members to see how local factors may influence a school’s environment and to compare across schools and districts. ODIS provides granular data, nationwide, with an easy-to-search interface and intuitive visualizations, to help make better decisions about resources and improve research and analysis."Angela Hawken, Ph.D, Director - NYU Marron Institute
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“Currently, Project Invent is working to bring the Project Invent experience to every high school and middle school beginning with students furthest away from opportunity. The ODIS tool will help us identify which schools and communities can benefit from our programming and receive additional support from our team for implementation and student impact!”Jax Chaudhry, Executive Director - Project Invent
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"State and local leaders should not focus on education alone but consider how to address health, economic and other needs at the same time. I think there's a potential use here in the new Perkins V comprehensive local needs assessment as well. Local leaders can use the ODIS index to benchmark their community’s needs against others in their states and identify neighboring districts that are experiencing similar community stressors."Angela Lee Smith, Ed.S., Program Specialist for Academies of Birmingham
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"Youth development organizations have long known that free and reduced lunch data is not always the best proxy for community needs. I think these orgs would love to access broader data sets that could inform strategy to meet their communities' needs.”Jennifer Brady, Chief Executive Officer - Development Without Limits
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“ODIS will help those in our industry understand community and nonprofit engagement across the country, and evaluate where resources will have the greatest impact. Knowing the specific barriers each community is facing at the school district level, gives our team and others the information needed to make informed, strategic decisions to support community impact efforts. We are excited to see the evolution of ODIS, and continue to identify new ways to incorporate the tool in our work at KPMG.”Jennifer Flynn, Managing Director, Community Impact - KPMG US
About NAF
NAF is a national nonprofit organization that aims to address the economic and social disparities that have marginalized too many students in this country by bringing schools and businesses together to better prepare students of all backgrounds – especially students who lack access to opportunity — for college, a career, and future success. For over 40 years, NAF has led a movement for immersive, career-focused teaching and learning in high schools. With greater access and opportunity to participate in work-based learning, connect with mentors, and more, all students – especially those in under-resourced communities — can move toward a life of upward mobility and success. At NAF, this is our role in leveling the playing field.
Currently, NAF supports over 112,000 students attending 604 NAF academies across 35 states and territories. In 2022, NAF academies reported that 99% of seniors graduated with 88% of graduates planning to go to college.
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Work-based learning experiences bring the classroom to the workplace and the workplace to the classroom — equipping students with the future-ready skills and industry-specific learnings to be successful in any pathway they choose. By exploring career options and creating plans for the future, NAF puts students on a path to achieving their full potential. Check out these free resources to help educators prepare their students for internships, writing resumes, and much more!
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