An independent team of experts gives Kent State a C+ for its COVID-19 dashboard.
Yale University public health professor Howard Forman founded “We Rate Covid Dashboards” with the goal of providing university communities with more information.
The team of public health and data analysts grade universities on a variety of criteria, including how frequently the dashboard is updated, what data is presented, and if it’s easy to read.
“A lot of universities weren’t talking about the surrounding community. They were not telling us about how many people were being tested, only about positive results," Forman said.
Kent State updates its dashboard weekly and shows only the number of cases on the Kent campus.
Forman believes the team has influenced how universities are providing information.
“I think we’ve done that. I mean I’m convinced we’ve done that, cause we have people reaching out to us all the time saying, ‘If we do this are we gonna get a higher score?’" he said. "And we’ll tell them the answer. We want them to get a higher score. We have no incentive for any school to get anything less than an A++.”
Ohio State is one of two schools that gets an A+. OU in Athens gets an A. The College of Wooster, which saw an increase in the number of positive tests last week, took a number of temporary steps including taking all classes online for this week, suspending all athletic practices and making all meetings virtual. It gets a B in the rating system. Oberlin receives a B-.
Forman says the group adds universities by request.
