Highest and Lowest Ranked Schools Linked to Economy

Many people have gone to public school in their life. While some schools are amazing, some are sub-par. Have you ever stopped to wonder why? It might be because you didn’t like your teacher or the food was questionable, but there may be more to the story. Most likely, when schools aren't the best it is more than what you see on the surface. We decided to try and find the causes of why schools could be considered better than others.

First, we found the highest and lowest ranking schools in the metro.

To find the rankings of the schools we used Niche.com. Niche’s rankings use the academics grade for 50%, teacher’s grade 15%, culture/diversity grade 10%, student/parent experience 10%, and other grades such as health and safety, resources and facilities, clubs/activities, and sports grade which are all worth 5% or less. Looking at the map it is clear that there is a geographic relationship between the ranking of schools and placement. We noticed the lower-ranked schools are closer to the center, generally in Minneapolis and St.Paul; whereas, the higher-ranked schools are in the suburbs on the western side. To better understand the cause of this we looked at the economics of the surrounding area. 

To better understand the possible correlation, we mapped the highest and lowest-ranking school districts (Niche.com) in the metro area. The districts follow the same pattern as the schools. We then found some economic statistics. We found Wayzata, Minnesota the highest-ranked district, and Brooklyn Center, Minnesota the lowest-ranked district. Although some of the lowest-ranking schools are located in Minneapolis, Minneapolis public school district houses 96 schools and 34,612 students total. Because of this, all the better schools in the district shadow Minneapolis's worse schools. This brings us to Brooklyn Center as the lowest-ranked district in the Minnesota metro.

There is a large difference in income between the highest and lowest-ranked school districts. Kids coming from wealthier families come from safer homes, which is a factor in the ranking, and higher-inhigher incomecome means higher income fundraisers make more money. This money can fund many things in the schools that affect the quality. It is a dreadful sign that your family’s income can impact your quality of learning.

What job a person has can help determine how much money they may receive. We looked into Wayzata, Minnesota, curious about common jobs and the salaries related to those occupations. On the graphs above, you can see what we found. After finding that the average per capita income is $38,881 in Minnesota, this shows that these jobs are higher paying than the median. On the other hand, we looked at Brooklyn Center, the location we found housed the lowest-ranking district. Here, jobs aren't below average, but not nearly as high-earning as Wayzata.

 _{As you can see, homes in the higher-ranked school districts often have higher home values, and lower-ranked school districts generally have lower home values. Because of this, there is a large gap in property taxes. These taxes help to fund schools in those areas. This means, that in the lower-ranked school districts, there is less money given to schools to hire teachers and keep up the building. This also affects extracurriculars and classroom size which could affect the ranking of the school and the experience of students. On the other hand, in highly-ranked districts where homes value and property taxes are higher. In fact, using a property tax percentage calculator, we learned that annually in the highest and lowest-ranked school districts there is over a 2.5x difference in property taxes.} 

There are many school districts in the Minnesota metropolitan area, but these two stand furthest apart. We decided that we should compare the two districts highest and lowest ranked, Wayzata and Brooklyn Center. We hoped to find what set them so far apart. We looked into the funding of these districts to see if there is a correlation between ranking and money.

Total revenue per yearr: $183,237,000 State gives $96,382,662 (52.6% of total funding), federal gives $4,031,214 (2.2% of total funding), local gives $82,823,124 (45.2% of total funding). 12,207 students, 19 schools (9 elementarys, 5 middles, 2 highs, 2 preschools)

Brooklyn Center Public school district Total revenue per year: $39,618,000 State gives $30,307,770 (76.5% of total funding), federal gives $2,892,114 (7.3% of total funding), local gives $6,457,734 (16.3% of total funding). 2350 students, 10 schools (1 elementary, 3 middles, 4 highs, 3 preschools)

 _{Wayzata has over 5x as many students as Brooklyn Center and receives around 4.6x the amount of money, but Wayzata only receives 3x more state finances and around 2x more federal finances. The big difference is in local funding. 16.3% of Brooklyn Center’s money is local while 42.2% of Wayzata’s money is local, 13x more. Local funding comes from property taxes and donations. Wayzata has over 2.5x more property taxes which equates to $6000 dollars more. With the increase in taxes, more money goes to the schools. As talked about more above there is also a large income difference which could impact donation amounts.} 

How does all of this fit together? Though we have always known that some schools could be considered better than others, it can be hard to spot a distinct reason. We think economics may be a key cause. Around the higher-ranking areas, there seems to be a correlation between money and school quality. How could money impact education? If money imputed to the school affects the education of a child, there needs to be a change. A child’s education impacts their entire future. If economics is a true cause of a school’s ranking, then it helps to prove that education needs to make a change in order to be equal opportunity for everyone.