As a result of school choice programs, Hartford students are not limited to simply attending their neighborhood school. Students can apply to attend any district school within the HPS system, or participate in interdistrict choice, which includes magnets, charters, or district schools in the Hartford metropolitan region. Since Achieve Hartford! focuses on education in the HPS system, the former choice program will be the most important.
In conjunction with Achieve Hartford’s report detailing the results of the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT), the following visualizations enable viewers to grasp the most salient results by amalgamating the series of achievement scores into one place. Though most of the schools are HPS district schools, there are a few magnets and one charter (Achievement First), which are all located within the boundaries of Hartford. It is clear that achievement, based on the percentage of students who met proficiency (3 and above) on the CMT has steadily increased since 2007, though in the last two years (2012 and 2013) it has leveled off. Now, if a Hartford parent would like to send his or her child to a different school within Hartford, this chart will facilitate making an informed decision. The parent can choose any number of schools to compare with each other, or with the Hartford average. As seen in the chart, the magnet schools tend to perform above the Hartford average. Magnets typically have specialized curricula, and they are designed to draw students from across districts. High achievement may stem from the peer effect, so lower-income Hartford students are benefiting from learning side-by-side with higher-income suburban students.
The performance of district schools is more difficult to generalize and there is no clear pattern. On the whole, most district schools do not seem to exhibit a steady increase in scores, but rather fluctuate from year to year.
If parents are unfamiliar with the many school options within Hartford, a map is more relevant to helping them make an informed decision. This map incorporates the achievement data from the graph, but displays it spatially. Thus, parents can easily see the distribution of schools based on achievement throughout Hartford, and type in their address to identify schools nearby. When the data are displayed spatially, it seems that Zone 1 (top right) has the best school options, several of which are magnets.