How much do you know about the unprecedented $100 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act education funds? It's easier for teachers to find more information about their next cell phone than about the schools they teach in.
$10 billion of the new funding has been slated for Title I programs to provide additional assistance to schools with a high concentration of families that live in poverty. To help the average teacher clarify these figures, Socrata transformed the U.S. Department of Education's data in a Social Data Player. Now teachers can filter, sort, and share the data without proprietary software. Socrata has also combined data from The National Center for Education Statistics to add perspective of school poverty. The data looks at how many students qualify for free and reduced lunch in each district -- a leading indicator for poverty levels at schools in the United States.
By combining the datasets, Socrata provides a resource that allows for a clearer view of where Recovery Act education funds are actually being distributed. A quick scan shows that not one of the schools with the top ten highest percentages of free and reduced lunch is in the list of the top ten schools for highest stimulus funding per child.
For more information, visit www.socrata.com/government/Title-I-Grants-to-School-Districts-All-States/xean-ic26.
