New Public School Access and Equity Data

This summer, I went to the annual conference of the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington. The major topic of conversation at the conference was the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), which recently came out for the 2011-2012 school year, and they are currently collecting data for 2013-2014.

The Department of Education calls the CRDC “wide-ranging”, which is an understatement. The dataset has data on public schools ranging from college prep (How many AP courses are offered? How many students take the SATs?) to discipline (How many students have been bullied? Suspended? Arrested? Expelled?) to teachers (What’s the average teacher salary? How many teachers are in their first or second year teaching?).

Some of this data is now on PolicyMap. It’s available to all users, in the Education menu, under “Data Points”, “Public Schools”, “Teachers and Discipline (CRDC)”. Longtime users will notice this is the first instance where we have a submenu in the “Data Points” section of any menu. That’s what happens when you have a lot of data!

Don’t be misled by the name; teachers and discipline are just two of the topics covered; it also contains data on enrollment, college prep, and retention. Though it’s important to mention, retention isn’t what you think it is: It’s students who are held back a grade.

Many of the indicators have filters, so you can see spatial variations across geographies. How does the number of AP courses offered differ between low-income and high-income areas?

And one more thing: This is just the start. Many of the indicators in the CRDC are broken down by race and gender, so even more detail is available. We’re working to add these indicators, along with more topics. Anything you’d like to see in particular? Send us an e-mail!