- Jennifer LaFleur
- Alex Harwin
- Kameel Stanley
Panelists with a range of expertise will discuss the federal civil rights dataset, how to make the most of it and avoid the pitfalls. We also will talk about how to use state data to tell stories about disparities in schools. This session will provide lots of story ideas, so come with questions!
Data available for every school. What can you get from it? Special ed, arrests at schools, corporal punishment, teacher absences.
Data is messy but powerful. Impact: RI Govornor, White House Brief, other local and state level results.
How do you work with it? Look up comparisons at school and district level. Larger analyses are more complicated and require feedback loops and teamwork.
Jennifer LaFleur (JLF): Vetting, spot-checking this data is very important.
Working on We Live Here. Tim Lloyd started the process by getting the data from DESE.
"When white kids act out they get kicked out of class, but the black kids get kicked out of school." Nut graf.
Johnny — 7 years old, out of school for 38 days in 1 year.
Data we got: Narrowed in on K-3 suspensions. Big difference between in-school suspensions (mostly given to white kids), out-of-school (mostly given to black students).
DIY data: surveys of resources, counselors, bias trainings.
Lessons: It had an impact. SLPS banned OSS for K-2, 20 other districts pledged to reduce or ban them. Different media, different approach: We created a database for people to look up their district.
Where to get the data: Office for Civil Rights, NCES, state departments of education
Watch for data entry errors, look for impossible data, check against other datasets, verify with schools/districts if possible.
New data points are coming out.
Kameel Stanley (KS): Data may not be the best way to effect change, but it can make some people pay attention.
Jennifer LaFleur is data editor at The Investigative Reporting Workshop and teaches at American University. She previously was a senior editor at Reveal/CIR, data editor at ProPublica, The Dallas Morning News, the San Jose Mercury News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was NICAR's founding training director and has won awards for her coverage of disability, legal and open government issues.
Alex Harwin is a quantitative research analyst for the Education Week Research Center. She works on a wide variety of projects, from marquee annual reports such as Quality Counts to data-driven reporting in collaboration with the Education Week newsroom. She received her education at Stanford, and UT with degrees in Sociology and policy analysis. Areas of Focus: Policy analysis, government data analysis, and research communication.
Kameel Stanley produces and co-hosts We Live Here, an award-winning podcast about race and class from St. Louis Public Radio and PRX. Previously, Kameel worked at the Tampa Bay Times, where she investigated racial disparities in policing and government. In her spare time these days, she runs a storytelling organization in St. Louis and a brunch club for women of color. She’s a Michigan native, a dog owner, a yogi and spaghetti enthusiast. @cornandpotatoes
Description and speakers from official schedule