(2018, October) | Useful to Parent Centers, families, and stakeholders in education for determining the racial quality or inequality of their local school or school system.
Based on civil rights data released by the U.S. Department of Education, ProPublica has built an interactive database to examine racial disparities in educational opportunities and school discipline. Using the database, you can look up more than 96,000 individual public and charter schools and 17,000 districts to see how they compare with their counterparts.
Access the database at:
https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation/
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Tips on Searching the Database
There are several ways to approach your search of the database. Here are a few suggestions for unraveling what you’ll see on the screen.
Use the search box. Simply type in the name of the school or school district you’re interested in. Hopefully, this will connect you quickly with the school or district information.
Use the US map. Using the map may be a more efficient way to drill down to the information you seek. Hover over the state of interest, and you’ll see pop-up names of school districts. Here’s an example of what this approach looks like. In hovering over the state of Maryland, slight movements of the mouse have made different country names appear. In the screen shot below, you can see that Anne Arundel County Public Schools, MD has appeared, with a small amount of data displayed.
If you click on that pop-up, you’ll be given a list of all the schools in that district (see screenshot example below), as well as basic education demographics for the entire county (how many students, how many teachers, how many schools, the racial makeup). Scroll the list of schools until you find the one you’re looking into, click on its name, and poof! You’ll get data on that school.
The data you’ll be shown on the school you’ve chosen will include:
- the school’s racial composition
- number of students and teachers in that school
- how students are disciplined (e.g., suspended or expelled) and if there are differences by race
- how many days of school were missed because of disciplinary actions
- what kinds of enrichment programs and curricula students have available in that school (and also in the district and in the state as a whole)
- much more!