Urban Institute: How DC’s continued growth is affecting its schools

Some pretty cool data and analysis released by Urban Institute today. See message below that was sent to me this morning. 

This morning the Urban Institute released an analysis of changes that have taken place in Washington, DC’s public schools over the past decade and a half. It’s the second installment in Our Changing City, an online, interactive series on DC’s rapid growth.

 

You’ll find it here:http://blog.metrotrends.org/2014/05/dcs-continued-growth-affecting-schools/.

 

A few highlights:

 

1.      Public school enrollment is up for the first time since the 1960s. This bubble map shows changes in enrollment at every school, traditional public and charter, between 2001 and 2013:http://datatools.urban.org/features/ChangingCitiesChapter2/index.html#charters. Each bubble shrinks, expands, moves, or disappears as that school loses students, grows, relocates, or closes. As you’ll see, charter schools, the red bubbles, are on a tear.

 

2.      Kids are voting with their feet, often going to school outside of their ward. This map shows those inter-ward travel patterns:http://datatools.urban.org/features/ChangingCitiesChapter2/index.html#moving

 

3.      Part of the story of changing demand for K-12 education within the city is theincreasing number of births to parents with college degrees. We have a map for that too:http://datatools.urban.org/features/ChangingCitiesChapter2/index.html#demand

 

4.      Then there’s the changing racial composition of the student population:http://datatools.urban.org/features/ChangingCitiesChapter2/index.html#diversity

 

Our Changing City is part of the Urban Institute’s effort to make research on important public policy issues accessible and engaging. Thanks for giving it a look. I hope you enjoy it and will share it with anyone who might have an interest.