Education
Education in Virginia: Doing it at home
Three decades ago homeschooling in Virginia was legally questionable and rare. But since the Code of Virginia was amended in 1984 to specifically allow for homeschooling, the number of children educated at home has grown steadily. When the Virginia Department of…
As more families choose cities, governments are returning to the drawing board
Urban areas import the young and export the old, the theory goes, or went. For decades, young people have come to Virginia’s urban areas to go to university or work, often moving out again when their children require more space…
“Breadwinner” Moms in Virginia: Distinct Populations
As Becky explained in her recent post, last month’s Pew report, Breadwinner Moms, finds that, in 2011, forty percent of American households with children under the age of 18 had the mother as the primary or sole earner. The report…
How to Succeed Financially: The American Template
In the U.S., the traditional narrative of how to succeed financially in has been to do the following: Go to college and earn a degree Use that degree to get a good job (with health insurance) that pays enough money…
Red State, Blue State: Education and the Vote
There has been no dearth of attention among political commentators, strategists, and scholars to the role of education in the upcoming presidential election, particularly regarding Obama’s and Romney’s support among college-educated and non-college-educated whites. As many pollsters have noted, Romney…
Racial Segregation in Virginia’s Schools
Last week, May 17 to be exact, marked the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the 1954 Supreme Court case that declared racially segregated schools “inherently unequal.” Reading an op-ed this weekend that relayed some of the…
More on Virginia’s Colleges
Speaking of infographics, I’ve been playing with the college completion data I highlighted previously. Below is a star chart (aka radar chart, spider chart) of data on Virginia’s 4-year public colleges.Each spoke represents a different piece of data, and the…
College Completion in Virginia
In March, The Chronicle of Higher Education, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, produced a microsite of college completion: it seeks to show “Who graduates from college, who doesn’t, and why it matters.” With data on 3,800…