My Experience
This summer at the NYC Department of Education, I worked on two main projects: the School Selection Model and Fellows Program Analysis. For the School Selection Model project, the department of strategic incentives was interested in building a tool that would allow them to search for schools meeting a specific set of criteria. Using all the NYC schools information as the input, I built a user interface that allowed users to customize the value of all the variables and as the output, the user obtained a list of all the schools meeting that specific criteria. The Fellows Program is an initiative of the NYC DOE to recruit Math and Science teachers who did not majored in Math or Science. In my analysis, I had to find out how fellow teachers performed compared to straight math or science teachers using several criteria defined by the director of HHRR.
During my internship, I found very valuable all the tools I learned in my “Analytics for Competitive Advantage” class, in which we learned how to analyzed large amounts of data in different ways. In order to design the School Selection Model, I needed to set up recurrent meetings with the staff in order to gather all their specifications; I found that the soft skills I learnt during the MBA (leadership, public speaking, negotiations, and presentations) where extremely helpful during meetings.
The main challenge I faced was dealing with imperfect information. My analysis was mainly based on data from surveys, which were incomplete and sometimes inconsistent. In order to make sure that the results I got in each of my analysis were correct and meaningful, I carefully reviewed and contrasted all the data to make sure that all the information I was using was consistent and comparable.
The main takeaways I got from this experience were threefold. The importance of input data: In order to get the right results in any analysis, it is critical to make sure that the input data is consistent and comparable. The role of the user when creating a model: I found it very valuable to learn about how important is the input of the user when building a model and user interface. The final user needs to feel comfortable with the model and their input and feedback during the design process is key for the final product’s success. Only when the final user feels comfortable with the logic of the model and its user interface, he or she will use it effectively. Finally, innovation in the DOE: I was amazed by the group of talented people working in the department of strategic incentives. Innovation is everything in this department and coming up with new programs and incentives is crucial to attract the best talent and have the best teachers in NYC public schools.
