The Midwest Regional Education Lab creates maps using GIS that provide information on educational issues and challenges
More education researchers are turning to GIS to analyze important questions, such as what drives high school dropout rates, low test scores, and differential school performance on state tests.
For example, Midwest Regional Training Laboratory (REL). recently released the Midwest Education Atlas, an online repository of geographic data appears that maps the latest data on high school dropout rates and gives educators a different perspective on how to prevent students from dropping out before they graduate. Esri's ArcGIS software was used to create the maps.
GIS has long been used to conduct a wide range of analyzes and create a myriad of data displays in many fields and industries such as urban planning, cartography, marketing, sales, and other business planning efforts. However, in the field of educational research, the use of GIS technology is still a relatively new methodology for examining data.
GIS technology offers a reliable method for analyzing and displaying complex, geographically linked educational data. When training data is displayed geospatially, patterns emerge that could easily go undetected in tabular or graphical data.
In recent years, REL Midwest, one of 10 regional education laboratories funded by the US Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, has been using ArcGIS to compile publicly available education data at the school, district, state, and district levels. examine geographic relationships and differences in a new way.
Using GIS technology and publicly available data sources, such as the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data, state education agency websites, and the US Census Bureau, researchers can see where schools in high- and low-performing districts are located. and easily identify low-income school districts and high- and low-performing schools within those districts. For example, poverty can be displayed at the county level using income-level information from the census.
The percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch (available through the NCES Common Core of Data) can be used as a reliable indicator of school and/or district poverty. School performance data can be easily mapped using publicly available state test scores or Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) indicators. When layers like those at the school, district, state, and district levels are combined, an interesting and easily digestible picture begins to develop. The materials depict geographic patterns and do not provide or imply causal links to the data.
REL Midwest serves educators and education policy makers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. A nonpartisan resource, REL Midwest provides expert advice to help them apply scientifically sound research to their decision making.
For Midwest Education Atlas, the data was initially collected from publicly available sources. The REL Midwest team then used ArcGIS to create a set of maps that displayed data on high school dropout rates, along with data on poverty levels, minority enrollment, and the percentages of mothers who earned a high school diploma or higher .
These dropout rate maps were created based on REL Midwest's support of statewide and citywide dropout prevention summits and helped frame dropout prevention discussions with policymakers in communities across the Midwest.
“Like all states, Midwest states are focused on improving graduation rates and reducing the number of students who drop out each year,” said REL Midwest Director Matt Dawson. “Government initiatives such as Every child graduates in Wisconsin and the Challenge to leave the supervisor in Michigan underscores the importance of this issue across the region.” In her work with dropout prevention summits, REL Midwest Senior Policy Associate Sara Wraight has noted that policymakers and practitioners are very interested in data presented in map form. “Maps create conversations “People seem more easily drawn to information when they can see places they know.
On the Midwest Education Atlas site, maps for Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin show the most recent data on dropout rates. Each map contains a link to a downloadable interactive PDF that allows users to hide or show various layers of information and zoom in or out on specific areas of the state.
REL Midwest plans to release additional maps of other educational data on a quarterly basis. Among the topics covered are state student achievement data, school funding and funding, and performance differences and related variables in urban and rural areas and schools. Organizational staff are constantly discovering new applications for GIS in their work and new techniques to use in analyzing and interpreting educational data. The atlas website is in its infancy, focusing mainly on displaying data. But REL Midwest expects to add more functionality as time goes on. Currently, the Midwest Education Atlas is primarily used by educational stakeholders who have pre-existing relationships with REL Midwest, such as policy makers, practitioners, and educational staff. As more and more data is integrated and displayed on the Midwest Education Atlas website, REL Midwest aims to integrate the functionality of ArcGIS Server to provide a fully customizable user experience that anyone – including researchers, teachers and parents – can access and displays data unique to their state, district or school.
The organization hopes that over time, as more users become interested in the project and more data is incorporated into the maps, the site will evolve into a fully customizable and interactive web experience that can help students, parents, researchers, administrators and cartographers. policymakers to make more informed decisions and thereby collectively improve the education system as a whole.