Making Improvements to Our Student Poverty Data

We recently made an improvement to our school-age poverty data. It’s a small improvement, but it’s the kind of thing we do to always make sure our data is the best available.

For years, PolicyMap had student poverty data from the New America Foundation. This data came to us with the excellent student proficiency data that the New America Foundation collects from states, and makes available in one location. For the poverty data, we found that we could get the data directly from the source, the Census’s Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates (SAIPE).

Replacing the data with this SAIPE data has three benefits:

1. Newer data – Now includes 2012

2. More years – Includes all years from 2000 to 2012

3. More data – Includes both number and percent of students in poverty.

This data is available to all users, and is hidden away in the “Education” menu, under “School Districts”, “Population”, and “Students in Poverty”.