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Community Matters
When demographic, academic, and financial data are analyzed in tandem, educators, decision makers, and parents are better situated to understand problems, take action, and make better-informed decisions that can improve student achievement.
One factor, often overlooked, is the profile of the community in which a local school resides. It's important to know that demographic characteristics help to put academic achievement into context. On SchoolMatters.com, you have a wealth of demographic information that can help you gain more insight about the challenges and strengths of your own community and those of neighboring communities. Specifically, SchoolMatters.com provides demographic information on adult education levels, median household income and home value, household income distribution, population distribution by age, and other household information, such as the percentage of single-parent households with children.
Education research has revealed that student characteristics, familial circumstances, and home environments are strongly correlated with student achievement (e.g. whether the student lives in poverty, has limited English proficiency, or has a learning disability). Generally, as student poverty, limited English proficiency, and learning disabilities increase, student academic performance tends to decrease. Students with any of these challenging circumstances are commonly described as "at-risk," and often receive and need additional resources to help them reach academic proficiency. While these are not the only factors that place students at risk, they are the most commonly accepted and available indicators of the challenges that many students face.
It's also important to be aware of the strong relationship between adult education levels and performance, which is similar to poverty in that academic performance tends to decrease as the percentage of adults with low levels of education increases. Additionally, challenges faced by urban students and teachers typically differ in many respects from those of their rural or suburban counterparts.
So, how can you use the demographic information on SchoolMatters.com to help you better understand the performance of your school or school district? Review your community demographic data in tandem with the community's academic and financial performance data. Then, go a step further and compare your information with a neighboring school district. Do you see any differences or patterns? Are there questions worth investigating further?
By discovering the relationships between academic performance, expenditures, and student needs, those interested in improving education can begin to focus on the root causes of problems, not just their symptoms, and develop more effective strategies for academic success.