Data Science For Good: PASSNYC

Overview

PASSNYC is a not-for-profit organization that facilitates a collective impact that is dedicated to broadening educational opportunities for New York City's talented and underserved students. New York City is home to some of the most impressive educational institutions in the world, yet in recent years, the City’s specialized high schools - institutions with historically transformative impact on student outcomes - have seen a shift toward more homogeneous student body demographics.

PASSNYC uses public data to identify students within New York City’s under-performing school districts and, through consulting and collaboration with partners, aims to increase the diversity of students taking the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). By focusing efforts in under-performing areas that are historically underrepresented in SHSAT registration, we will help pave the path to specialized high schools for a more diverse group of students.

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Problem Statement

PASSNYC and its partners provide outreach services that improve the chances of students taking the SHSAT and receiving placements in these specialized high schools. The current process of identifying schools is effective, but PASSNYC could have an even greater impact with a more informed, granular approach to quantifying the potential for outreach at a given school. Proxies that have been good indicators of these types of schools include data on English Language Learners, Students with Disabilities, Students on Free/Reduced Lunch, and Students with Temporary Housing.

Part of this challenge is to assess the needs of students by using publicly available data to quantify the challenges they face in taking the SHSAT. The best solutions will enable PASSNYC to identify the schools where minority and underserved students stand to gain the most from services like after school programs, test preparation, mentoring, or resources for parents.

Submissions for the Main Prize Track will be judged based on the following general criteria:

• Performance - How well does the solution match schools and the needs of students to PASSNYC services? PASSNYC will not be able to live test every submission, so a strong entry will clearly articulate why it is effective at tackling the problem.

• Influential - The PASSNYC team wants to put the winning submissions to work quickly. Therefore a good entry will be easy to understand and will enable PASSNYC to convince stakeholders where services are needed the most.

• Shareable - PASSNYC works with over 60 partner organizations to offer services such as test preparation, tutoring, mentoring, extracurricular programs, educational consultants, community and student groups, trade associations, and more. Winning submissions will be able to provide convincing insights to a wide subset of these organizations.

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How to Participate

Accept the Rules

To be considered a participant in the PASSNYC Data Science for Good Event you must register and accept the rules.

Accept the rules by filling out this form: SIGNUP FORM
(You need to be logged into your Kaggle account)

Make Submissions

Main Prize Track:

• Be a registered participant by accepting the rules
• Make your kernel public
• Submit your kernel(s) by filling out this form SUBMISSION FORM

Secondary Prize Track:

• Be a registered participant by accepting the rules
• Make sure your kernel is public

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Prizes and Eligibility

Main Prize Track ($15,000 total)

PASSNYC will award $15,000 in total prizes to five winning authors who submit public kernels that effectively tackle the objective and use two or more of Socrata’s NYC Open Datasets on Kaggle (List of public datasets). These kernels must be submitted for consideration by the deadline.

Prizes:

• 1st place: $5,000
• 2nd place: $4,000
• 3rd place: $3,000
• 4th place: $1,500
• 5th place: $1,500

Secondary Prize Track (swag)

To encourage collaboration through sharing of code and use of publicly available data, secondary prize awards will be based on popularity (upvotes) and the use of Socrata’s NYC Open Datasets on Kaggle (List of public datasets). Winners will be the authors of the top five most upvoted kernels that use two or more sources of Socrata’s NYC Open Data on Kaggle.

Prizes are the winner’s choice of:

• Kaggle No Free Hunch T-shirt
• Kaggle Tier T-shirt
• Kaggle Coffee Mug
• Kaggle Water Bottle

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Timeline

All dates are 11:59PM UTC

• Deadline for secondary prize submissions: July 17th

• Deadline for main prize submissions: August 7th

• Main prize winners announcement: August 14th

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Rules

To be eligible to win a prize in either of the above prize tracks, you must be:

• a registered account holder at Kaggle.com;
• the older of 18 years old or the age of majority in your jurisdiction of residence;
• not a resident of Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Sudan; and
• not a person or representative of an entity under U.S. export controls or sanctions.

Your kernels will only be eligible to win if they have been made public on kaggle.com by the above deadline. All prizes are awarded at the discretion of PASSNYC, and PASSNYC reserves the right to cancel or modify prize criteria.

Unfortunately employees, interns, contractors, officers and directors of Kaggle Inc., and their parent companies, are not eligible to win any prizes.