A Picture Is Worth 51,930,274 Words: A Text Analysis of Public User Reviews of Schools

• In Event: Choosing Schools in Market-Based Systems

Abstract

Students, parents, and educators value various aspects of education and communicate those values in different ways. One increasingly common way are online user review platforms, such as Great Schools. We apply Natural Language Processing, to the 600,000 Great Schools reviews of the vast majority of public, charter, and private schools in the country. Encompassing more than 50,000,000 words our initial analysis pre-specified eight broad topics and 27 sub-topics. Our preliminary results suggest that reviews of charter and private schools include more text about learning and instruction, school culture, and teacher quality. Reviews of public schools are more likely to discuss interpersonal relationships. Ongoing analysis focuses on how reviews vary by user type and the demographics of the local community.

Authors

• Debbie Kim, NORC at the University of Chicago

• Douglas N. Harris, Tulane University

• Nicholas Mattei

• Srihari Korrapati, Tulane University