Education
It’s a hard knock life: School test scores closely follow local income levels
When people begin house hunting, one of the most common criteria they consider is the quality of the local school district, not just for the sake of their children but also because schools often influence home values. The District of Columbia’s Office…
Could the “two-body problem” be contributing to rural brain drain?
More career women means more two-career couplesOne of the biggest economic stories of the last half-century has been the growing participation of women in the workforce. And it’s not just the number of women working that’s important; it’s the type of work…
Where Virginia legislators went to college
The Washington Post recently published a graphic showing where the 100 U.S. senators went to college. It might be nothing more than an interesting bit of biographical information about our elected officials, but it could also be meaningful. For educated…
Even more evidence for the new donut
A while back, I wrote a post on the transformation of US cities over the last two decades, using Charlotte, Houston, Atlanta, and Denver as examples. That investigation, using graphs to show changes in the city from the core to the…
America’s College Promise in Virginia
On Friday, January 9, President Obama announced America’s College Promise, his new vision for US community colleges, at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee, having released this teaser just the day before.In its press release on the plan, the White…
The demographics of declining college enrollment
Despite a rise in high school graduation rates, college enrollment is dropping from its 2011 peak, leaving many small colleges scrambling. Here in Virginia, enrollment has largely been steady, but two small colleges closed in the last two years, and others have…
A funny thing is happening in many US cities
An article at the Urbanophile gives us a helpful graphic explaining the old and new “Donut” conceptions of the city. In the “Old Donut,” we have an impoverished central city with a ring of thriving suburbs around it.An example of that model appears…
The Line that Divides DC
No it’s not a party line. It’s an almost perfectly straight line running north-south along 16th Street, passing through the White House, and then continuing along the Potomac River to the south. It divides two very different sides of the…
What’s Driving the Rise in High School Graduation Rates?
Much of the news that circulates regarding the state of education is not positive, but one trend that remains under-reported is the significant rise in public high school graduation rates during the past decade. By the end of this month,…
Metropolitan Cross-Sections: College Graduates
With input from Hamilton, I’ve been looking recently at how metropolitan areas change as one travels from the center to the periphery. The following charts show the percent of the population 25 and older with bachelor’s degrees. The graphs are…