Li Feng, Ph.D. & Jelena Tešić, Ph.D.
Department of Finance and Economics / Department of Computer Science
McCoy College of Business / College of Science and Engineering
Identifying Resilience Factors in Texas Public Schools: A Data Science Approach for Short and Long-Term Planning
Background:
Dr. Feng is an economist who specializes in the economics of education, labor economics, and health economics. In particular, her research examines education policy as it relates to teachers and student outcomes. Her work helps us understand the factors that create resilient education systems and, ultimately, a well-prepared future workforce.
Faculty Fellows Project:
Dr. Feng collaborated with Dr. Tešić to create an interactive learning resilience dashboard for school districts in Texas. Dr. Feng led the policy aspect of this project, offering implications for strategic planning to help the Texas Education Agency and policymakers identify interventions to improve learning resilience.
Background:
Dr. Tešić is a data scientist with expertise in machine learning and data science for large unstructured data, such sensor data, and social and health record data. By using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, Dr. Tešić can help identify the "story" in a data set, which can then help inform future decision making and policy interventions.
Faculty Fellows Project:
Dr. Tešić collaborated with Dr. Feng to create an interactive dashboard that contains a distinct story line for each school district in Texas with data on the most prominent resilience predictors to improve learning recovery for that school district. Dr. Tešić led the machine learning and data science aspect of this joint fellows project.
Project Outcomes
Interactive Data Dashboard
Users can view indicator data at the county and district levels to understand the most impactful factors on learning loss in Texas school districts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. These data provide insight into avenues for learning recovery in Texas schools.
Learning Loss Recovery Findings and Next Steps
Ervin, P., Feng, L., Payan, D., & Tešić, J. (2023). Learning loss recovery after COVID-19 pandemic in Texas public schools. Poster presented at the Health Scholar Showcase, Translational Health Research Center, San Marcos, Texas.
Resiliency Research Report
Check back soon to learn more about the policy implications of these findings.