COVID-19 Mask-Mandate Assessment
CompletedSouthern Poverty Law Center · 2021
Statistical assessment for the Southern Poverty Law Center of COVID-19 case occurrence in Mississippi school systems after the statewide mask mandate was dropped.
When Mississippi dropped its statewide mask mandate in 2021, attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center needed something specific: not opinions about what happened next in schools, but defensible statistical evidence.
The problem
COVID-19 case data existed, scattered across individual school systems in whatever format each district kept it. Turning that into evidence usable in potential litigation meant acquiring it, standardizing it, and analyzing it to a standard that would hold up to scrutiny.
The approach
Worked directly with SPLC attorneys to acquire case-occurrence data from sampled Mississippi school systems, then assembled and led a team of students and professionals to clean and reconcile the disparate sources into one analyzable dataset. Completed the statistical analysis of case occurrence following the mandate’s end.
The outcome
Delivered the completed statistical analysis to SPLC for use in potential suits: a working example of the thing this site is about, turning scattered public-interest data into metric-based evidence an organization can act on.