Overview
Poverty limits access to resources like books, transportation, and stable housing. The visualizations below communicate disparities in educational outcomes for students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds in the city of Chicago.
Poverty and Unemployment Visualizations
1) Neighborhoods like South Lawndale, Gage Park, Brighton Park, and New City in the South and Southwest Sides have the highest concentrations of adults without a high school diploma (highlighted by the darkest red shade). These areas are often underserved and face systemic barriers to education access, demonstrating how lack of funding can create educational disparities.
2) Areas like Loop, Near North Side, Lake View, and Lincoln Park have very low percentages of residents without a high school diploma. These areas, located in Central and North Chicago, are often associated with better socioeconomic status
3) The West Side shows mixed results. South Lawndale has high rates of no diploma, while West Town and Austin have much lower ones comparatively. This suggests that disparities can exist even within geographically close communities. s1) The South Side of Chicago has the highest rate of unemployment which may be influenced by lack of job opputunities
2) The Central and North side have the lowest rates of unemployment, more han 2 times less than the South Side
3) There are clear divides by geographic region (South, Southwest, West versus North,Central)
1) The South and West sides have large variability in their unemployment rates, demonstrated by the wide range. This points to internal inequality within the region, with some areas doing substantially worse or better than other areas
2) The North and Central side have shorter violins, pointing to less variability and more stable unemployment rates within the area
3) The South and West side have the highest median unemployment, consistent with previous graphs
1) The South side contains the majority of communities with high levels of unemployment
2) The North side has very low unemployment rates. The bubble are much lighter and smaller compared to the South and South West side
3) Within communities, such as the west side, there is more variability within unemployment, with some communities have very large bubbles and some having very small bubbles.
Educational Outcomes Visualizations
An important note is that The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system is a mix of neighborhood schools, selective enrollment schools, magnet schools, and charter schools. So while a school may be located in a specific region, the students that enroll there may not come from that region. Schools labeled "magnet" or "academy" are typically not neighborhood schools, and tend to have very selective criteria
1) Many of the top performing schools are labeled "academy", "magnet", or "prepatory", indicating they likely are selective and charge additonal tuition.
2) The two magnet in the South and South west side show that the geograpic region of the school is not as important as the access to resources and funding
3) The majority of high performing schools are located in the North, Central, or West side of Chicago
1) All schools range from 13-14 on the ACT, which is 6-7 points below the national average, indicating large gaps in education and performance
2) Many of these schools are labeled as "career", "community", or "technical" academies, indicating that schools with non-college-prep focuses may have less focus on ACT preparation.
3) There are no North side schools represented, and the majority of schools come from the South or South West