A Closer Look: Education

“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 marketplace 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.

Join Friday as we look at the Working Families.