NICAR 2016

Deep dive:
#FailureFactories

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An outlier

Horrible stories

A theory develops

Problem #1:

Conventional wisdom

Inevitable

Poverty

Parents

First ingredient:

Buy in

Our big, awesome Failure Factories team:

Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick, Lisa Gartner, Nat Lash, Connie Humburg, Chris Davis

Unusual approach...

(Not a few big questions)

Testing that wisdom and building a case

  • Demographics
  • Median Household Income
  • Povery rate
  • Percent of black kids on free/reduced lunch
  • Percent of men/women who didn't graduate high school
  • Percent of single-parent homes
  • Percent unemployment
  • Readiness data
  • Survey of other districts
  • Catalogued school board’s promises:
    • Funding, attention, etc.
  • Database of kids’ stories

Bodies

  • Nowhere else 5 of bottom 15
  • Far poorer places doing better

Over and over...

...till we were convinced

Problem #2:

Convincing

anyone else

Strong feelings

Hard harm to understand

Data as ‘body cams’

Thousands of stories

Mental zooming

Power of the web

@tbtprojx