As Labor Day approaches and parents begin to plan for a new school year, ProPublica would like to invite you to participate in a conference call about equality of educational opportunities in America.  On Tuesday, August 2 at 3 p.m. Eastern, ProPublica’s education reporter Sharona Coutts, director of computer-assisted reporting Jennifer LaFleur and news application developer Al Shaw, will hold a conference call to show people how to localize the school data from our “Opportunity Gap” project.

The data and analysis showed how schools were performing in providing equal access to a high-quality education. The project allows reporters, parents, students, teachers, bloggers and anyone else to compare different schools and school districts to another on a variety of important statistics. The data include the number of students at the school or in the district, percentage of inexperienced teachers, the number of Advanced Placement courses, percentage of students eligible for a school lunch program (as an indicator of poverty), the ethnic makeup and much more.

If you would like some tips on how to do your own local analysis of the data, we encourage you to join our free conference call on August 2 at 3 p.m. EDT.  Sign up here and we will send you the details on how to participate.  The ProPublica staffers will discuss their work and answer any questions you might have so that you can localize the story.

Please feel free to share this invitation and contact us if you have any questions in advance of the call.