PolicyMap subscribers can now find out how individual public schools around the country rate on a scale of 1 through 10 (with 10 being the highest performance rating and 1 being the lowest).
The availability of this data can help you answer questions about schools in the neighborhoods, cities, metros or states you care about. As a subscriber, you can find the new GreatSchools Ratings in the Add Sites Menu under “Schools” by clicking on “Schools with Performance Data”. You can then filter all schools by the GreatSchools Rating to find out where the top rated schools are in your community.
Over the next week or so, we’ll be posting some information that might be of interest to you about where these top rated schools are located. And, stay tuned for the release of our next education dataset: TRF’s own calculation of neighborhood proximity to high performing schools.
In the meantime, look at the list of metro areas with the highest concentrations of top-rated public schools. We calculated the percent of public schools in each metro area with ratings of 9 or 10 (on a scale of 1 to 10,) out of all public schools in that metro area that received a rating from GreatSchools. The table below shows the metro areas where at least 50% of the schools with GreatSchools Ratings were highly rated public schools. Get this – only 11 metros had public schools where at least 50% were highly rated – the rest fall off below that. And, these metros represent some of the smallest metros in our nation. Is there anything unique about these places? Is there anything particular about neighborhoods, more generally, in which high performing schools are located? Check back for more.
| Metro |
Percent of public schools with GreatSchools rating of 9 or 10 |
Total Number of Public Schools with Ratings |
Number of Children Under 18 (2007) |
Percent of Children Attending Public School (2000) |
| Los Alamos, NM |
100%
|
7 |
4,162 |
94.15% |
| Lawrenceburg, TN |
92%
|
12 |
10,415 |
93.71% |
| Boone, NC |
56%
|
11 |
6,146 |
92.72% |
| Spirit Lake, IA |
56% |
9 |
3,193 |
98.55% |
| Fort Walton Beach-Crestview-Destin, FL |
53% |
37 |
46,758 |
92.96% |
| Alamogordo, NM |
50% |
20 |
16,583 |
94.88% |
| Gardnerville Ranchos, NV |
50% |
12 |
9,602 |
94.67% |
| Sidney, OH |
50% |
23 |
13,199 |
90.95% |
| Williston, ND |
50% |
14 |
4,079 |
91.68% |
| Celina, OH |
50% |
16 |
10,805 |
95.94% |
| Martin, TN |
50% |
12 |
6,704 |
97.02% |
*The GreatSchools rating system is based on a score ranging from 1 to 10, with 10 having the highest performance. GreatSchools calculates their GreatSchools’ Overall School Rating by averaging that school’s ratings for all grade/subject combinations. For example, if a state test is given in reading and math in grades 3 through 10, the rating for a school serving grades K-5 would be the average of the ratings for grade 3/math, grade 3/reading, grade 4/math, grade 4/reading, grade 5/math and grade 5/reading. School ratings should not be compared across states, as they are relative to the state in which the school operates. If a given school’s rating is high, that means that its test scores are better than the test scores of most other schools in the state.
For information about tests administered in each state, please see the Data Directory entry for GreatSchools School District Performance.
“We have launched a housing plan that will help reasonable families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages.
It’s a plan that won’t help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values. Americans who will not be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped to bring about. In fact, the average family who refinances today can save nearly $2,000 per year on their mortgage.”
- President Barack Obama – Domestic Priorities to a Joint Session of Congress (2/24/09)
Beyond anecdotes in the media about individuals who bought outside of their means, PolicyMap can help quantify and communicate the types of risks home buyers have been taking with their mortgages.
One measure of risk is the Loan-to-Value ratio, the ratio of the property’s value to how much the buyer is borrowing. Traditional home buying advice suggests a 20% down payment. Such a transaction would have a LTV of .8. An LTV of 1 means that the new buyer put nothing down, financing the entirety of the home purchase through one or several loans.
A home buyer could also have taken out several loans to cover the cost of a property. In this situation a homeowner would have multiple mortgages, including a main loan covering 80% of the property’s price, combined with a smaller loan for the remaining 20%. These loans are often called 80-20 or piggyback loans.
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“Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs. More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector, jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges, constructing wind turbines and solar panels, laying broadband and expanding mass transit.”
- President Barack Obama – Domestic Priorities to a Joint Session of Congress (2/24/09)
PolicyMap now offers unemployment data and information about people in the labor force. The interactive map below shows most current unemployment data from BLS at the county level.
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“In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut – that’s right, a tax cut – for 95% of working families. An, by the way, these checks are on the way.”
- President Barack Obama – Domestic Priorities to a Joint Session of Congress (2/24/09)
Researchers choose to define working families using many different income categories. On PolicyMap, you can use a number of data layers to see these various categories. The maps below show two different ways of considering where working families live.
The lavender color on the map shows where households are making between $40,000 and $60,000, according to Claritas.
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“The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.
In a global economy, where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity. It is a prerequisite.
Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma, and yet just over half our citizens have that level of education.”
- President Barack Obama – Domestic Priorities to a Joint Session of Congress (2/24/09)
PolicyMap also contains a host of education data. From Census and Claritas estimates on where working age people have less than a 9th grade education; to math and reading proficiencies for school districts across the nation from the New America Foundation; to test scores for schools (public, private and charter) and districts from GreatSchools.com. It’s a lot of data and it can help us understand where communities are struggling either with a population that needs more education in order to compete in today’s market place or with schools that are having trouble keeping up. Take a look at the following maps. Remember, you can click on any map and go directly into the PolicyMap application. Zoom in, pan around, and click on any shaded area of the map to see actual values. You can check out all of our Education data by clicking on the Education tab in the Add Data Layer menu.
Where do the highest concentrations of people without a high school degree live? The darkest shaded areas on this map represent places with higher concentrations. Zoom into a neighborhood to see this shaded at a block group level.
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“…we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold. We can’t afford to do it.
It (this budget) includes a historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform, a down payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It’s a commitment.”
- President Barack Obama – Domestic Priorities to a Joint Session of Congress (2/24/09)
PolicyMap houses and maps a variety of indicators from Census’ Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE) that show where uninsured populations live (and are most concentrated) across the country. Check out the Health tab in the Add Data Layer menu to see counts and percentages of uninsured populations, by age and poverty level, in county and state level maps. Look at this map, for example, of the working age population without health insurance. Zoom in to get a closer look at counties in states like Texas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Montana and Arkansas to see where some of these most burdened populations live.
Join us later this week as we look at Education and the Working Families.
“We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril and claimed opportunity from ordeal. Now we must be that nation again. That is why, even as it cuts back on programs we don’t need, the budget I submit will invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future; Energy, Health Care, and Education.
…
It begins with Energy.”
- President Barack Obama – Domestic Priorities to a Joint Session of Congress (2/24/09)
Check out some of the Energy information on PolicyMap. Click onto any map to explore your neighborhood.
See where houses use Gas to heat their homes across the nation.
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Last night, Americans tuned in to President Barack Obama’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress (read the speech here). Today, we want to turn up the conversation around six big issues he raised:
Starting this week, we are going to share a series of interactive maps and tables of the places – and the people who live in them – that are most affected by these concerns. Comment on the information we share or log in to www.policymap.com to further explore the data yourself.
It starts Friday and, in the words of our President, “it begins with Energy”.
The burst of the housing bubble has affected most (if not all) of us as we watch the values of our homes drop. And, for those of us who took out two loans to pay for the purchase of our home just a couple of years ago, or who ended up with an interest rate that was higher than we would have liked, the problem has become not just one of wealth, but of economic survival. So, how have homeowners in these swing spots fared compared to the rest of us? Though we don’t know how such personal financial strain may influence voting, these spots offer an interesting variety to review.
As context, mortgage data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) tells us that nationally more of us have been taking out high cost loans in he past few years to purchase or refinance our home. In 2004, 14.56% of all home loans made were high-cost and likely made by a subprime lender. By 2006, this number had doubled: 28% of all home loans made in 2006 were high-cost. (Final 2007 HMDA was just released and will be up on PolicyMap in a couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see how much things changed during the last year.)
When it comes to these swing spots, all of these places – but for Fairfax – have higher rates of high-cost lending taking place than the nation. It is particularly high in Youngstown, where 57.72% of loans made in 2006 were high-cost; and in Pueblo City where 40.62% were. In all places, the percentage of these loans has been rising since 2004 – the greatest increase took place in Elko City where the rate more than doubled.
Money tends to be a taboo subject generally – except when it is election time. Then, everyone starts talking about money, and more importantly, taxes. With today’s turbulent economy, the topic seems ever more relevant, so we ask “What do these swing spots look like when it comes to money and taxes?”
If we’ve learned one thing as we publish this fourth blog posting, it is that Fairfax County is always at one end of the spectrum along any indicator – and Youngstown is at the other. It’s no exception when it comes to income. In Fairfax County, the estimated median income in 2007 was $95,590. In Youngstown, it was only $27,438. While 6.64% % of households nationwide are estimated to earn more than $150,000 per year, almost a quarter of all households do in Fairfax. Significantly fewer households fall into this higher income bracket across the other swing spots.
Incomes
| Area |
Median Household Income |
Median Family Income |
% of Households earning less than $25,000 |
% of Households earning more than $150,000 |
| Fairfax County, VA |
$95,590 |
$111,740 |
6.80% |
23.73% |
| Elko, NV |
$54,776 |
$63,957 |
20.61% |
2.87% |
| Las Cruces, NM |
$34,970 |
$44,659 |
37.28% |
2.07% |
| Pueblo City, CO |
$33,996 |
$41,551 |
36.71% |
2.38% |
| Youngstown, OH |
$27,438 |
$33,288 |
46.28% |
1.05% |
