Connecticut Voices for Children, a non-profit research and advocacy organization, published a new report, Unequal Schools: Connecticut’s Racial, Socioeconomic, and Geographic Disparities in Kindergarten Class Size and Teaching Experience. Their study reveals how low-income students and students of color are more likely to attend public schools with large kindergarten class sizes, and employ the least experienced teachers in Connecticut. These unequal educational resources are linked to the state’s long-standing patterns of residentially segregated housing.
When CT Voices co-authors Kenneth Feder and Sarah Iverson visited Trinity College to discuss their draft report, they asked for advice on how to communicate their findings with the public. Trinity College student Veronica Armendariz ’16, an Educational Studies major and student researcher in the Data Visualization project, recommended placing school inequality and town racial data in a searchable map, so that viewers can see statewide patterns and also zoom into specific neighborhoods. Veronica worked with CT Voices and taught them how to create their own searchable maps with Google Fusion Tables, using an open-source template developed by Derek Eder in Chicago. Click on both of the maps to explore the data.
