Special Education Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 831 special education schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 776 special education schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 96% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 63.1% of the 831 special education schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 13.6% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.9%), yellow (6%) and black (4.5%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on special education school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest special education schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
3. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%

Font

The largest number, nearly 43.7%, of special education school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on special education school websites include Verdana (24.2%) and Helvetica (7.9%).

The largest special education school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Arizona State University: Arial
3. Miami Dade College: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 597 special education schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 162 YouTube channel subscribers. The special education schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. University of Minnesota - Duluth: 4,518 subscribers
2. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers
3. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 2,942 subscribers

Exactly 663 special education schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,011 Twitter account followers. The special education schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
2. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all special education schools have websites, only about 18% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 82.5% of special education school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The special education schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Northwest Missouri State University: 6,291 broken links
3. University of Michigan - Dearborn: 5,490 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on special education school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The special education school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. California Lutheran University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The special education school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point: 0 HTML validation errors; 1,213 CSS validation errors
2. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors
3. Spoon River College: 68 HTML validation errors; 871 CSS validation errors