The Children's Corridor » School Performance http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:19:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 The Power of a Free Lunch http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org/data/the-power-of-a-free-lunch http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org/data/the-power-of-a-free-lunch#comments Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:02:32 +0000 Piton Staff http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org/?p=1091 Read the Rest]]> 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 FRL-eligible third-graders were proficient in reading compared to 80 percent of non-FRL-eligible third-graders – a performance gap of 37 points. The gap was nearly as large in math, where only 39 percent of third-graders qualifying for FRL were proficient, compared to 75 percent of non-FRL students.

This map of elementary school FRL participation shows the tenuous connection between poverty, nutrition and learning. Schools in darker shades of blue have the highest FRL participation – more than 98 percent of students at Garden Place Elementary in Globeville and Smith Renaissance School of the Arts in Northeast Park Hill receive free or reduced lunches.

Map: FRL participation in Corridor elementary schools, 2010-2011
Download a pdf version of this map

Children in families earning incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free lunches; children from families earning between 130 and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price lunches.

Explore the data:

Corridor Elementary Schools FRL Participation, 2010-2011 [Google Doc]
CSAP Performance by FRL Participation, 2010-2011, DPS and APS schools [Google Doc]

Download raw data from the source:

Colorado Department of Education / SchoolVIEW

Resources:

National School Lunch Program
National School Lunch Program Fact Sheet [pdf]

]]> http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org/data/the-power-of-a-free-lunch/feed 0 Dynamically Visualizing Test-Score Data and Performance for Near Northeast Schools http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org/data/dynamically-visualizing-test-score-data-and-performance-for-near-northeast-schools http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org/data/dynamically-visualizing-test-score-data-and-performance-for-near-northeast-schools#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:19:23 +0000 Piton Staff http://www.denverchildrenscorridor.org/?p=856 Read the Rest]]> 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 at the bottom of the graphic will animate the school data over time. Near Northeast schools are highlighted in green. Using the interactive axes, you can view the percent of students proficient in math, reading and writing. Click on a school to isolate it and compare its performance to other DPS schools.

This tool is useful for exploring previously unseen patterns in the data. For example, although Manual High School’s 2010 SPF score (47%) is nearly identical to its 2008 score (46%), in that time it increased the percent of students who are proficient or advanced twofold in math and a third in reading.

Lawless presented this graphic at MOP’s May Education committee meeting. It was so well-received, MOP asked Piton to make another graphic showing CSAP scores for Near Northeast schools over the past six years.


Explore the data:

Access the data that fuels the visualizations

DPS schools, 2008-2010 SPF and CSAP [Google Doc]

Near Northeast Schools, 2004-2010 CSAP [Google Doc]

Download raw data from the source

SPF ratings

CSAP scores

Relevant organizations:

MOP

DPS

CDE

 

 

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