The Federal Education Budget Project
Platinum and gold sponsors
The Federal Education Budget Project details the demographics, finances and test scores of all 14,000+ school districts in the United States. It was built for the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation — a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington DC.
This site was built in-house, with very little in the way of real custom development. It makes heavy use of Views, CCK, and some thoroughly modified .tpl.php files for the District and State pages. Users get top-line data presented graphically, and can compare any district to others (either in-state or nation-wide) using the data points they choose.
I submit it here as an example of how much Drupal can deliver even when the “developer” lacks all but the most basic of coding skills. There are undoubtedly more elegant and efficient ways to tackle some aspects of the site — and we continue to work on those — but it’s become a very robust resource already. And aside from the arguments used in the district-comparison Views, and some truly simply PHP in the templates, it’s all done with Drupal’s “out of the box” functionality.