How Atlanta’s School Systems are Changing
Decatur Metro | May 29, 2013Public Schools Enrollment Changes in the Atlanta Region from Atlanta Regional Commission on Vimeo.
Lewis points us to this recent video posted on the Atlanta Regional Commission’s website doing a quick overview of changes to the Atlanta metropolitan area’s school systems since 2000 and 2010. Take a look! A couple of interesting views of CSD’s changes vs. the rest of Atlanta in there.
Percent change is a bad (and often misleading) metric to compare populations with vastly different sizes. Especially across geographic areas that themselves have vastly different population sizes.
Made up Example: In 2013:
My Household
————————-
Population + 50%
Females + 100%
Children +∞%.
Preg. Women – ∞%
Decatur
————————-
Population + 10%.
Females + 1%
Children +25%.
Preg. Women + 3%
Indeed. But there still is often value in percent change. Ultimately it’s better to have net diff in there as well.
This presentation and the website behind it could keep me busy for a long time. Hope it keeps the CSD School Board and Central Office busy too. All data helpful in triangulating towards good estimates and planning. It’s nice that the data breakdowns often include the CSD level.
I’m disappointed though that the percentages estimated for private school attendance did not include CSD specifically. I’ve always been interested in that. Because I never see that estimate, I’ve assumed it’s not measured. But evidently it’s available at the county level. I’m wondering what the source of those data is. Couldn’t quickly put my figure on the source on neighborhoodnexus.org but I haven’t searched hard yet.
What’s up with Glennwood? The data calls it “New Glennwood Elementary.” Is that the correct name?
Why is it such an outlier? Oakhurst, Winnona Park and Clairemont are all at 97.7% or higher in passing the CRCT, and all have very low absentee and economically disadvantaged rates.
But Glenwood has only an 87.5% CRCT pass rate. And the graph seems messed up (yes, I started a sentence with “And.”). When you click on it in the list at the bottom, the only button in the right-side graph that lights up is actually for Indian Knoll Elementrary (way over on the top right of the graph). And it shows a very high rate of absentee and economically disadvantaged.
Re New Glennwood Elementary: that’s probably to distinquish it from the OLD Glennwood Elementary which is what it was before it was the Glennwood 4/5 Elementary (which is what the State always seemed to call it instead of “Academy”, a term that always sounded Hogwartish and pretentious to me.)
Re low CRCT ranking: I wonder if that’s 2011-2012 third grade data? New Glennwood may still have had a low census for that grade as the school had recently reincarnated itself. A few low scoring outliers in sparse data might have skewed the estimate. Or it may be just that the data management folks in CRCT-land couldn’t handle all the name change/no change issues and messed up the analysis. Everything I hear from families at Glennwood is fabulous. Word on the street is that it’s the new “best elementary” in Decatur. (And boy has THAT title rotated around Decatur in the time I’ve been here!)`
AHID is correct–the system could not handle renaming a school at the same address but using “Glennwood Academy” would compare it to it’s previous incarnation. So it is now and forever will be called New Glennwood, at least in this system.
Can’t wait to see how the State handles it if the 4/5 Academy at Fifth Avenue ever needs to get repurposed as a K-3 or K-5 Elementary for that burgeoning area. There would be the same Old Fifth Avenue, New Fifth Avenue issue. It would become the New FAVE!
The AJC.com headline today is about this topic, but with the emphasis on the metro-wide increase in the Hispanic student population. Interestingly, the text of the article doesn’t mention that the increase in the number of black students has been nearly as great (in absolute numbers), and the increase in the black population in general in the metro area has been much larger than any group, Hispanic included (again, in absolute numbers).
The numbers seem to confirm that “Atlanta” is indeed a black mecca, though it is suburban Atlanta, particularly Gwinnett, where much of the recent growth has occurred.
What strikes me is how different CSD looks from most of the chart. It almost looks like the inverse of “white flight” in the 1960s. We still are more non-white than 9 of the other 20 districts but our rates of white student growth and black student decline are way ahead of everywhere else. There’s some growth in the proportion of Asian and Hispanic students but those groups were so tiny to begin with that they are still a small proportion of our population compared to the other two groups.
I truly believe that appreciating diversity (of all sorts, not just race/ethnicity) is a value that most in Decatur share and for which many move here. But we’re going to have to find some creative ways to maintain what we’ve got for racial/ethnic diversity in our student body and to show appreciation for diversity in a city that is increasingly white.
” It almost looks like the inverse of “white flight” in the 1960s.”
Yes, it does, and for the intown area in general, not just Decatur.
“bright flight” is a national phenomenon:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/09/suburbs-losing-young-whit_n_569226.html