Compilation of multiple years of California Academic Performance Index scores into single files.
This dataset includes two files that combine multiple years of the California Academic Performance Index into single CSV files. These files have a few advantages over the original data releases from The California Department of Education:
If you do not need to analyze multiple years and can work with fixed width text or DBF files, the original, single-year source files may be more appropriate.
This data is a beta release, and has not been fully verified for fidelity with the upstream source. Use with caution.
These files have several differences from the upstream sources:
The original API data is distributed as two files per year, one for the base and one for growth targets. These seperate files have differences between them, including:
There are many colums that appear in only a few years, such as 'capam' or 'vnrt_m28'. Please see the files columns_by_year_base.csv and columns_by_year_growth.csv for reports of in which years each colum appears in the annual files.
Many of the columns have names or descriptions that include a year, such as 'AI_API13'. These coliumns were renamed to remove the year, and the descriptions were changed to include a phrase that indicates if the year is the current year of the file -- '13' in the 2013 file -- or the next or previous year.
In the growth files, these column translations were made, with examples for the 2013 growth file.
| Year Value Description | Changed to | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Current year value | _growth | api13 -> api_growth |
| Previous year value | _base | api12 -> api_base |
In the base files, There are several other substitutions. In these entries, 'YY' refers to the two digit current year, and '*' refers to one or more characters.
| From | To |
|---|---|
| apiYY | api |
| apiYYb | api |
| *911 | *91 |
So, the columns named api10, api11, and api12 have all been renamed to api.
Column descriptions were also changed, to use a descriptive phrase for the year. Using the 2013 file as an example:
| Year Value Description | Example | Changed To |
|---|---|---|
| Current year | 2013 | [This year] |
| Next year | 2014 | [Next Year] |
| Previous year | 2012 | [Last year] |
| Last year to current year range | 2012-2013 | [Last year Range] |
| Current year to next year range | 2013-2014 | [Next Year Range] |
The original source includes many columns that have numeric values with non-numeric flags to signal exceptional conditions. For instance, the API score columns for ethnic and racial groups will include a hash mark ('#') or an asterisk ('*') when the number of students in that category is too small for statistical significance.
In these cases, the non-numeric values have been converted to negative integers. Letter flags are converted to a negative number, where the absolute balue of the number is the orginal position of the letter in the alphabet. Other values have been converted to negative numebrs that are less than or equal to -100, and several flags are mapped to the same vaule when they have the same meaning.
| Original Code | Value |
|---|---|
| a | -1 |
| b | -2 |
| c | -3 |
| d | -4 |
| e | -5 |
| f | -6 |
| h | -8 |
| i | -9 |
| m | -13 |
| n | -14 |
| s | -19 |
| t | -20 |
| x | -24 |
| y | -25 |
These codes have meanings that differ for each column. See the descriptions in the schema.csv file for the meaning of the code in a particular column.
Codes less than or equal to -100 represent vaules that are missing, not applicable or were errors in the source files.
| Orig Code | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| # | -100 | Value is not significant |
| * | -100 | Value is not significant |
| n/a | -101 | Value is missing |
| n/r | -101 | Value is missing |
| 4y | -200 | An erroneous value in the source, which does not have a defined meaning. |
| es | -200 | An erroneous value in the source, which does not have a defined meaning. |
As of version 1 of the dataset, these caveats apply:
See the file schema.csv for the names, types and descriptions of columns in the two files.