The Piton Foundation’s Data Initiative works with community groups in the Corridor to create actionable, data-rich knowledge. This page showcases some of the recent data work we’ve done and provides basic context to help us and others make sense of conditions in the Corridor.
Every day, 10 children are born in the Children’s Corridor. If things don’t change, 5 of them won’t graduate from high school. In this infographic, find out what data tells us about the lives of children in the Corridor. View Infographic
Explore demographic and education data on this interactive Children’s Corridor map. View school performance indicators such as student test scores and graduation rates and population risk factors such as teen births.
Quick Facts About Education
We recently gathered together some facts that form a pointillist vision of the education landscape in the Children’s Corridor and the Denver metro area. Not only is the way we educate kids changing, but essential characteristics about the population we are educating have changed as well. In the past several years, the suite of schools in the region has grown to include charter schools, innovation schools, online schools, and others. At the same time, the school-age population has seen a rapid increase in free and reduced lunch (FRL) participation and English-language learner (ELL) enrollment. Here are some of the highlights:… Read the Rest
The Health-Education Gap Crosses Generations
Health and education levels are closely connected. What’s more, disparities in health and education cross generations: The education level of a child’s parents influence his or her success later on in life. Children whose parents haven’t completed high school have a higher risk of health problems during childhood and throughout life. Data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment show that among mothers over 20 in the Children’s Corridor in 2009, 36% had not completed high school. This infographic explores what data reveal about the level of education of mothers in the Children’s Corridor, and what that means… Read the Rest
Mapping early childcare services in the Children’s Corridor
Where can parents go to find early care services — such as day care and preschool — in the Children’s Corridor? This map shows the licensed care providers, alongside the under 5 population displayed by census tract. By exploring this map, you can see which areas have a high demand for child care services and whether there are facilities to meet those demands. In one three-tract region in northeast Original Aurora, for example, there are 1780 children under age five and only two early childhood care locations. This map can help identify gaps and potential opportunities for service expansion. Here… Read the Rest
The Number of Children Living in Poverty is Increasing: Implications for The Children’s Corridor
The number of Colorado children living in communities stricken with poverty has nearly quadrupled over the past decade – rising from 20,000 to 92,000 – according to the KIDS COUNT Data Snapshot released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Statewide, eight percent of children live in high-poverty communities, which is below the national rate of eleven percent. However, the problem is growing faster in Colorado than in the rest of the country: Colorado’s percent increase in children living in poverty since 2000 was greater than every state except Alaska and Vermont. The Children’s Corridor, which runs from Denver’s Five Points… Read the Rest
Transit: An essential ingredient for education equity
As Metro Denver expands its FasTracks light rail system, the newly-formed Mile High Transit Opportunity Collaborative (MHTOC) is working to create equitable housing and economic development. A common question MHTOC hears is, “How does transportation relate to my issue?” This map demonstrates how transportation options are essential ingredients for education equity. The Eagle P3 East Corridor light rail expansion runs through the Children’s Corridor. To better understand how transit interfaces with education quality, we mapped the light rail alignment, planned station locations and bus lines on top of child demographic disparities and school locations displayed by performance. We found that… Read the Rest
The Power of a Free Lunch
Of the 36,755 Denver Public Schools and Aurora Public Schools students living in the Corridor during the 2010-2011 school year, 78.7 percent – 28,940 kids – participate in the free and reduced lunch (FRL) program, which is an indicator of poverty. Lunch is more than food. It’s essential fuel for learning and social growth. Proper nutrition is tied to children’s performance in school. And malnutrition, especially during early childhood, has been linked to discipline problems and lower IQs. Students Denver Public Schools and Aurora Public Schools who qualify for FRL under-perform compared to their peers. In 2011, 43 percent of… Read the Rest
Dynamically Visualizing Test-Score Data and Performance for Near Northeast Schools
School performance is an unwieldy concept. Even with quantitative measures – test scores, school quality ratings, graduation rates, college enrollment – it can be difficult to understand and describe the state of schools, especially over time. To tackle this problem, Patty Lawless of Metropolitan Organizations for People (MOP) asked Piton to visualize school performance for Denver Public Schools in the Corridor’s Near Northeast neighborhoods. The graphic (available here or below) – made with free Google tools – shows the relationship between School Performance Framework (SPF) ratings and Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) scores over three years. Pressing the play button… Read the Rest