Language Minority Education
 

How to Find School District Demographics

Pamela Harris, Research & Instruction Librarian
Roberto Vargas, Reference & Digital Scholarship Librarian
January 2015

PART I: where is the data?

PART II: census vs social explorer?

PART III: creating reports with Roberto

PART IV: nces and pde with Pam

PART V: get the backstory . . .

It will be a challenge to cover all the different sources in five pages. How much of the demographics should we include? How much description from our observations? We need to talk about the program model, but what the teacher describes and the actual practice are two different things! The actual writing of the assignment (and any assignment) TERRIFIES me. The fear of being “wrong” paralyzes me.

PART I: where is the data?
Decennial Census or American Community Survey?

Deciding which survey instrument has the data you need, depends on which data you want. If you are interested in languages spoken in you school district -  there are several choices. . .

1 Year ACS

Selected areas 60,000
or more

3 Year ACS
Selected areas
20,000
or more

5 Year ACS
All areas

American Community Survey

PART II: Census.gov vs Social Explorer

Which one should you use?

2011 Language Mapper

Using data from the 2007-2011 5 Year ACS the census bureau created this interesting map: type your zipcode into the search bar and find out how many languages are spoken there. . . 

https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/data/language_map.html

American FactFinder 

Use the Guided Search option
1. Choose Topic

2. Language

3."Language spoken at home"

4. Enter zipcode

5. Choose dataset of interest

http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/guided_search.xhtml

PART III: creating reports with Roberto

(or social explorer, the basics)

http://www.socialexplorer.com/

PART IV: NCES and PDE with Pam
 

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is a program of the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics that annually collects fiscal and non-fiscal data about all public schools, public school districts and state education agencies in the United States. The data are supplied by state education agency officials and include information that describes schools and school districts, including name, address, and phone number; descriptive information about students and staff, including demographics; and fiscal data, including revenues and current expenditures.

National Center for Educational Statistics

http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/

Pennsylvania Department of Education

Find your Pennsylvania School Performance Profile for 
school specific demographics, enrollment details and
an overview of student academic achievement.

http://www.pde.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/pennsylvania_department_of_education/7237

PART V: getting the backstory

more focused

          ERIC- US Department of Education research and information 

          ProQuest Education Journals

broader range (all disciplines)

           Tripod - books, chapters, articles 

           Lexis Nexis - newspapers and magazines (and legal sources)

           ProQuest Research Library - magazines and journal articles 

 questions welcome - - -

email: pharris1@swarthmore.edu

email: rvargas1@swarthmore.edu

office hours*: for pamela t3-5; w3-5
 office hours*: roberto m11-1; th11-1

* held at mccabe library research & info desk

other times by appointment: email to schedule

http://libguides.brynmawr.edu/content.php?pid=358690&hs=a