Patterns in Illinois Educational School Data

TL;DR

This study analyzes Illinois educational data, revealing how factors like school type, location, and poverty influence student achievement, with Chicago schools often outperforming statewide trends and showing notable improvements in charter school performance.

Contribution

It provides a straightforward analysis of key factors affecting student achievement in Illinois, highlighting unique patterns in Chicago and the impact of selective and charter schools.

Findings

Student scores decline linearly with poverty in most Illinois schools.

Chicago schools outperform other Illinois schools at all poverty levels.

Chicago charter schools have improved and surpassed traditional high schools in recent years.

Abstract

We examine Illinois educational data from standardized exams and analyze primary factors affecting the achievement of public school students. We focus on the simplest possible models: representation of data through visualizations and regressions on single variables. Exam scores are shown to depend on school type, location, and poverty concentration. For most schools in Illinois, student test scores decline linearly with poverty concentration. However Chicago must be treated separately. Selective schools in Chicago, as well as some traditional and charter schools, deviate from this pattern based on poverty. For any poverty level, Chicago schools perform better than those in the rest of Illinois. Selective programs for gifted students show high performance at each grade level, most notably at the high school level, when compared to other Illinois school types. The case of Chicago charter schools is more complex. In the last six years, their students' scores overtook those of students in traditional Chicago high schools.