Despite outspending other countries per student, the US continues to lag behind global competitors in educational outcomes. Finding a better way to classify resources for schools and districts may help clarify different spending approaches and drive toward strategies to use the dollars we spend on education more effectively and efficiently.

ERS was formally established as a non-profit consulting firm in 2004. Their primary work is helping school districts use their resources more strategically. In this competition, the goal is to use data to predict aspects of a school's budget, and use that to make more effective decisions.

More specifically, the goal is to predict the likelihood of attaching a label (i.e., R&D, Recruitment, Legal, etc.) to a particular budget item using the features (mostly textual) provided in the dataset.

The prizes for the competition are as follows:

• First: $5,000
• Second: $2,000
• Third: $500
  
  

For more information, visit the DrivenData Competition website.

Related:

• DrivenData: Data Science Competitions for Social Good
• Overcoming Text Analytics Barriers
• Data Mining Modern Languages