Analyzing the Chicago Public School system: How are high schools affected by the per capita income of the neighborhoods around them? Ajay Jain Follow Feb 28, 2018 · 4 min read

The Chicago Public School system is notorious for having both world-renowned high schools as well as some of the worst high schools in the country. I decided to spend time today analyzing the discrepancy between high schools in Chicago. The majority of my data is analyzed with the per capita income of a high school’s neighborhood as the independent variable, and other variables such as graduation rate and school safety as dependent variables. For this study, I decided to determine if there was a correlation between the independent and dependent variables I had chosen.

I obtained my data sources from the Chicago Data Portal. More specifically, the datasets I used are the CPS 2011–2012 Progress Reports and Census Data — Selected socioeconomic indicators in Chicago, 2008–2012. More recent datasets can be used as well. However, I chose these two datasets because they both covered 2011 and 2012.

Income and College Enrollment Rate

There is a strong correlation between the income of a school’s neighborhood and percentage of students that enroll in a postsecondary institution at the the 95% confidence level. Most schools in a neighborhood with a per capita income of less than $25,000 send less than seventy percent of their students to college. However, the high school with the highest college matriculation rate is in a neighborhood with a per capita income of around $26,000. This is an outlier since the high school (Northside College Prep) is a selective admissions school and its students come from all over Chicago.

Income and Graduation Rate

At the 95 percent confidence level, there is also a correlation between the per capita income of a high school’s neighborhood and a high school’s graduation rate. Note that the zero percent graduation rate is due to the policies of this high school, which is a school for people with learning disabilities. I did find it interesting that a high school in a neighborhood with a per capita income of around $60,000 graduated only 12 percent of its students.

Income and Instruction Score

There is not a correlation between the income of a school’s neighborhood and the quality of the school’s teachers at the 95% confidence level. Even in some of the richest neighborhoods in Chicago, the teachers can still be subpar. On the other hand, some of the highest ranked teachers can be found in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.

Income and ACT score

There is a very strong correlation between the per capita income and a school’s average ACT score. Schools in poor neighborhoods tend to have very low ACT scores. Only two high schools in neighborhoods with a per capita income of less than $25,000 had an average ACT score greater than 20.

Income and School Safety

The strongest correlation found today is between the per capita income and a school’s safety score. Although there are schools in poorer neighborhoods that are very safe, most of these high schools score below a 50 in the safety score ranking.

Conclusion:

High schools in the Chicago Public School system are greatly affected by the neighborhoods around them. Generally, the better performing high schools are in middle class and upper class neighborhoods of Chicago. Some of these exceptions are selective admission high schools placed in neighborhoods with lower per capita income, such as Northside College Prep. My study concluded that there was a correlation between per capita income and college enrollment rates, graduation rates, ACT scores, and safety. However, we did not find a correlation between per capita income and the instruction score of teachers.

Click here to see my code.