Online Reviews Are Leading Indicators of Changes in K-12 School Attributes
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| Title: | Online Reviews Are Leading Indicators of Changes in K-12 School Attributes |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Linsen Li (ORCID |
| Source: | Grantee Submission. 2023. |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 11 |
| Publication Date: | 2023 |
| Sponsoring Agency: | Institute of Education Sciences (ED) National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) |
| Contract Number: | R305C180025 RI2007955 III2107505 RI2134857 |
| Document Type: | Speeches/Meeting Papers Reports - Research |
| Education Level: | Elementary Education Junior High Schools Middle Schools Secondary Education |
| Descriptors: | Elementary Schools, Middle Schools, Secondary Schools, Educational Change, Institutional Characteristics, Evaluation, Computer Mediated Communication, Language Usage, Discourse Analysis, Change Agents, Internet, Electronic Publishing |
| DOI: | 10.1145/3543507.3583531 |
| Abstract: | School rating websites are increasingly used by parents to assess the quality and fit of U.S. K-12 schools for their children. These online reviews often contain detailed descriptions of a school's strengths and weaknesses, which both reflect and inform perceptions of a school. Existing work on these text reviews has focused on finding words or themes that underlie these perceptions, but has stopped short of using the textual reviews as leading indicators of school performance. In this paper, we investigate to what extent the language used in online reviews of a school is predictive of changes in the attributes of that school, such as its socio-economic makeup and student test scores. Using over 300K reviews of 70K U.S. schools from a popular ratings website, we apply language processing models to predict whether schools will significantly increase or decrease in an attribute of interest over a future time horizon. We find that using the text improves predictive performance significantly over a baseline model that does not include text but only the historical time-series of the indicators themselves, suggesting that the review text carries predictive power. A qualitative analysis of the most predictive terms and phrases used in the text reviews indicates a number of topics that serve as leading indicators, such as diversity, changes in school leadership, a focus on testing, and school safety. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| IES Funded: | Yes |
| Entry Date: | 2024 |
| Accession Number: | ED652691 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | School rating websites are increasingly used by parents to assess the quality and fit of U.S. K-12 schools for their children. These online reviews often contain detailed descriptions of a school's strengths and weaknesses, which both reflect and inform perceptions of a school. Existing work on these text reviews has focused on finding words or themes that underlie these perceptions, but has stopped short of using the textual reviews as leading indicators of school performance. In this paper, we investigate to what extent the language used in online reviews of a school is predictive of changes in the attributes of that school, such as its socio-economic makeup and student test scores. Using over 300K reviews of 70K U.S. schools from a popular ratings website, we apply language processing models to predict whether schools will significantly increase or decrease in an attribute of interest over a future time horizon. We find that using the text improves predictive performance significantly over a baseline model that does not include text but only the historical time-series of the indicators themselves, suggesting that the review text carries predictive power. A qualitative analysis of the most predictive terms and phrases used in the text reviews indicates a number of topics that serve as leading indicators, such as diversity, changes in school leadership, a focus on testing, and school safety. |
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| DOI: | 10.1145/3543507.3583531 |
