This dataset is a cleaned, analysis-ready look at diversity, achievement and segregation in each school division and in each individual traditional and charter K-12 school in the country.
The original data, obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics and ED Facts under the Department of Education, provide annual enrollment figures and proficiency measures at all U.S. public schools from the 2000-01 school year to the 2014-15 school year. The AP cleaned and enhanced this data with additional information, including using the charter school crosswalk from the Stanford Education Data Archive to identify the district ID of the school district that geographically contains a given charter school.
Additionally, The Associated Press created several measures to weigh a school’s demographic similarity to its district, its concentration of certain demographic groups of students, and its ‘Entropy’ – a measure of evenness of demographic categories. At the district level, the AP has provided a similarity score and created an ‘Entropy Index’ for each district, so reporters could identify districts that are more partitioned along racial lines.
These measurements can be used to reach conclusions such as “50 percent of black students in Milwaukee attend schools that are at least 90 percent black” and “Norland Middle School is one of the most dissimilar schools in the Dade County School District: over 95% of its students are black, compared to only 22% in the district as a whole.”
Using this dataset, the Associated Press reported that:
- Nationwide, segregation metrics such as the exposure index show that school segregation has been returning to its Civil Rights-era levels.
- The proportion of charter schools that are over 99% nonwhite nationwide is 17%, in contrast to only 4.5% of traditional schools.
- While charter school quality is highly varied across districts, charter schools that are overwhelmingly minority lag behind both more integrated charter and traditional schools in the same district.
Download additional documentation and a sample of the data by completing the form on this page.
Provided in collaboration with Associated Press